Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 Texture Address Units 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 R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 3933 (66%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 14 (93%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 will be 79% faster than the Radeon R9 270 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (about 78%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56000 (78%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is quite a bit (more or less 78%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 270, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.