Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator 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 HD 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 7006 (244%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 149 Watts (99%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (138%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (approximately 154%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 77600 (154%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is quite a bit (about 78%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6870, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (78%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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