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Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 290
Intro
The Radeon HD 7970 uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.
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 |
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9876 points |
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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8225 points |
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Ethereum Mining Hash Rate
| Radeon R9 290 |
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29 Mh/s |
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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21 Mh/s |
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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks
Power Consumption (Max TDP)
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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250 Watts |
| Radeon R9 290 |
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300 Watts |
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Memory Bandwidth
Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 7970 overall. (explain)
| Radeon R9 290 |
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320000 MB/sec |
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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264000 MB/sec |
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Texel Rate
The Radeon R9 290 is just a bit (approximately 8%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)| Radeon R9 290 |
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128000 Mtexels/sec |
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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118400 Mtexels/sec |
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Pixel Rate
If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is a better choice, by far. (explain)| Radeon R9 290 |
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51200 Mpixels/sec |
| Radeon HD 7970 |
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29600 Mpixels/sec |
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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
Radeon HD 7970Amazon.com
Check prices at:
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Radeon R9 290Amazon.com
Check prices at:
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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.
Specifications
| Model | Radeon HD 7970 | Radeon R9 290 |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | AMD | AMD |
| Year | January 2012 | November 2013 |
| Code Name | Tahiti XT | Hawaii PRO |
| Memory | 3072 MB | 4096 MB |
| Core Speed | 925 MHz | 800 MHz |
| Memory Speed | 5500 MHz | 5000 MHz |
| Power (Max TDP) | 250 watts | 300 watts |
| Bandwidth | 264000 MB/sec | 320000 MB/sec |
| Texel Rate | 118400 Mtexels/sec | 128000 Mtexels/sec |
| Pixel Rate | 29600 Mpixels/sec | 51200 Mpixels/sec |
| Unified Shaders | 2048 | 2560 |
| Texture Mapping Units | 128 | 160 |
| Render Output Units | 32 | 64 |
| Bus Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Bus Width | 384-bit | 512-bit |
| Fab Process | 28 nm | 28 nm |
| Transistors | 4313 million | 6200 million |
| Bus | PCIe 3.0 x16 | PCIe 3.0 x16 |
| DirectX Version | DirectX 11.1 | DirectX 11.2 |
| OpenGL Version | OpenGL 4.2 | OpenGL 4.3 |
Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.
Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount 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 the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.
Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.
Radeon HD 7970Amazon.com
Check prices at:
|
Radeon R9 290Amazon.com
Check prices at:
|
Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.
|
Comments
One Response to “Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 290”I'm seeing a core clock speed of 947 MHz on a stock Radeon R9 290, please update your inofrmation on this card and other radeon cards with incorrect core clock speeds.