Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 290X		10609 points
Radeon R9 380X		9519 points
	Difference: 1090 (11%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon R9 380X overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a small bit (about 13%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 380X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16640 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.