Radeon HD 7950 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 7950		7731 points
	Difference: 2878 (37%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950		235 Sol/s
	Difference: 134 (57%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 7950 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (about 57%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (57%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be much (approximately 100%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 7950, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (100%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 max fill rate.