Radeon R7 370 2G vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which features a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It 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 R7 370 2G		5582 points
	Difference: 4294 (77%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
Radeon R7 370 2G		210 Sol/s
	Difference: 73 (35%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R7 370 2G		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 14 (93%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 370 2G		110 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (173%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R7 370 2G overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 370 2G		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (about 105%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 370 2G. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 370 2G		62400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65600 (105%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 370 2G		31200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20000 (64%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.