Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1018 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs 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 295X2		21205 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 11329 (115%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 295X2 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 290 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 320000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be a lot (approximately 180%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 230336 (180%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is much (about 155%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 79104 (155%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.