Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380X, which features a core clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, 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 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X will be 75% faster than the Radeon R9 380X in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be a little 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 a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.