Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 290X		10609 points
Radeon R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 4666 (79%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290X should be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 270 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be much (more or less 96%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68800 (96%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (more or less 78%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 270, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's 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 card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.