Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 290		9876 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 990 (11%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 11 (4%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory perform just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 280X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a little bit (approximately 18%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the Radeon R9 280X, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (88%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.