Radeon R9 270X vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, 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 290		9876 points
Radeon R9 270X		6590 points
	Difference: 3286 (50%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
Radeon R9 270X		177 Sol/s
	Difference: 106 (60%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 11 (61%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 270X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (about 60%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48000 (60%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (60%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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