Radeon R9 285 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 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 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 should be 82% faster than the Radeon R9 285 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (approximately 24%) more effective at AF 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 is much (approximately 74%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 285, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.