Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 2384 (29%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

Radeon R9 290X		60 FPS
Radeon HD 7970		37 FPS
	Difference: 23 (62%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7970 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be just a bit (about 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (approximately 73%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (73%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.