Radeon R9 270X vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 590, which makes use of a 12 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1469 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this specific model. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (3%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 590 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon R9 270X in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 82944 (46%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is a lot (about 164%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 131536 (164%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 will be much (approximately 47%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 270X, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15008 (47%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.