Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 380 4G		8837 points
	Difference: 1039 (12%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 380 4G		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon R9 380 4G in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (75%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a bit (about 18%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 380 4G. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19360 (18%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (approximately 65%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 380 4G, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20160 (65%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.