Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 580, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1257 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, 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 580		13630 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 3021 (28%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
	Difference: 54 (17%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		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 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X will be 22% faster than the Radeon RX 580 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be quite a bit (more or less 29%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40208 (29%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.