Radeon HD 7790 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator 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 290		9876 points
Radeon HD 7790		4330 points
	Difference: 5546 (128%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 7790 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (approximately 129%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7790. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72000 (129%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (more or less 220%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7790, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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 get to the maximum fill rate.