Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

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 390 8G		12733 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 4508 (55%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390 8G		28 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 390 8G should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 7970 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 120000 (45%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be much (about 35%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be much (about 116%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7970, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34400 (116%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of 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 speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.