Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 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 390X 8G		13555 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 2946 (28%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon R9 390X 8G		330 Sol/s
	Difference: 39 (12%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390X 8G		32 Mh/s
Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (10%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

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

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should be quite a bit (about 31%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390X 8G is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (31%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number 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 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.