Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 580, which features a clock speed of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 580		13630 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 3754 (38%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 32 (11%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (4%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 should be a lot faster than the Radeon RX 580 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be much (approximately 41%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53008 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a lot (about 27%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon RX 580, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10976 (27%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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