Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 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 390 8G		12733 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 2124 (20%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon R9 390 8G		326 Sol/s
	Difference: 43 (13%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		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 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390 8G is 20% faster than the Radeon R9 290X in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be a little bit (approximately 14%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be much (approximately 25%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 290X, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 quite a few 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.