Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480, which comes with a clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 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 RX 480		13349 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 2740 (26%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon RX 480		280 Sol/s
	Difference: 89 (32%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should be 22% faster than the Radeon RX 480 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be a small bit (more or less 15%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20480 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (43%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.