Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

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 290X		10609 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 2648 (33%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 186 (102%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (32%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (approximately 35%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36304 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (more or less 71%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21344 (71%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.