Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 380X, which comes with GPU core speed of 970 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1425 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 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 290		9876 points
Radeon R9 380X		9519 points
	Difference: 357 (4%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 380X		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 10 (53%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 is 75% faster than the Radeon R9 380X in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a little bit (approximately 3%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 380X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (3%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a lot (about 65%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 380X, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380X		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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.