Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 480, which comes with a clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, 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 much faster than the Radeon RX 480 in general. (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 bit (approximately 15%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be quite a bit (about 43%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 480, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.