Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

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 390 8G		12733 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 2857 (29%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390 8G		326 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 43 (15%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 390 8G		28 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (4%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 390 8G should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon R9 290 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is much (more or less 25%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (25%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.