Radeon R7 240 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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 R7 240		1218 points
	Difference: 8658 (711%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 270 Watts (900%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 is 1011% quicker than the Radeon R7 240 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 291200 (1011%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit (approximately 777%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 113400 (777%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the Radeon R7 240, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 45360 (777%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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