Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which has a core clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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 380 4G		8837 points
	Difference: 1039 (12%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 380 4G		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 380 4G in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (75%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is a bit (more or less 18%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 380 4G. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19360 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is a lot (more or less 65%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 380 4G, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20160 (65%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.