Radeon R7 260X vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 R7 260X		4381 points
	Difference: 5495 (125%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R7 260X		14 Mh/s
	Difference: 15 (107%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
Radeon R7 260X		95 Sol/s
	Difference: 188 (198%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (161%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 should be 208% faster than the Radeon R7 260X in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 216000 (208%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (about 108%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66400 (108%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the Radeon R7 260X, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (191%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.