Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 460 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 460 2GB, which comes with a clock speed of 1090 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
Radeon RX 460 2GB		117 Sol/s
	Difference: 166 (142%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 460 2GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon RX 460 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is a lot (about 110%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon RX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		61040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66960 (110%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is a lot (more or less 194%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon RX 460 2GB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460 2GB		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33760 (194%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.