Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 470, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 926 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1650 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 470		11756 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 1147 (11%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon RX 470		289 Sol/s
	Difference: 80 (28%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon RX 470		26 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (12%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290X should perform a lot faster than the Radeon RX 470 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (52%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be a little bit (about 19%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon RX 470. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22272 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is much (about 73%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 470, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21568 (73%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.