Radeon R9 285 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which features 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 made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, 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 290X		10609 points
Radeon R9 285		8500 points
	Difference: 2109 (25%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 285		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 11 (61%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (58%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 285 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (82%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be quite a bit (about 37%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37984 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be much (approximately 74%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 285, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21824 (74%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.