Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX Vega 56

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX Vega 56, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1156 MHz. The HBM2 memory is set to run at a speed of 1600 MHz on this particular model. It features 3584 SPUs along with 224 TAUs and 64 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 Vega 56		21011 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 11135 (113%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX Vega 56		210 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX Vega 56 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon R9 290 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX Vega 56		419430 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 99430 (31%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX Vega 56 should be much (more or less 102%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX Vega 56		258944 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 130944 (102%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX Vega 56 should be quite a bit (approximately 45%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX Vega 56		73984 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22784 (45%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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