Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 380X, which features a clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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 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

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 380X in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is just a bit (approximately 3%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 380X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is the winner, by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.