Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, 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 HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 3486 (55%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 14 (93%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (about 44%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39200 (44%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (about 73%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (73%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.