Radeon R9 285 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation 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 290		9876 points
Radeon R9 285		8500 points
	Difference: 1376 (16%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 285		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 11 (61%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R9 285 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is quite a bit (about 24%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25184 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (approximately 74%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 285, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21824 (74%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should 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 applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.