Radeon HD 7790 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 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 R9 290X		10609 points
Radeon HD 7790		4330 points
	Difference: 6279 (145%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7790		85 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 215 Watts (253%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7790 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is much (more or less 151%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7790. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84800 (151%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (220%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.