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Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

The Radeon R9 290X has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480, which features clock speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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 RX 480 13349 points
Radeon R9 290X 10609 points
Difference: 2740 (26%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X 369 Sol/s
Radeon RX 480 280 Sol/s
Difference: 89 (32%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X 29 Mh/s
Radeon RX 480 27 Mh/s
Difference: 2 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 150 Watts
Radeon R9 290X 300 Watts
Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon RX 480 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X 320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480 262144 MB/sec
Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 is a little bit (approximately 15%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X 140800 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 20480 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X 51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480 35840 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 15360 (43%)

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

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Radeon R9 290X

Amazon.com

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Radeon RX 480

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon R9 290X Radeon RX 480
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year October 2013 June 2016
Code Name Hawaii XT Polaris 10
Memory 4096 MB 8192 MB
Core Speed 800 MHz 1120 MHz
Memory Speed 5000 MHz 8000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 300 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 320000 MB/sec 262144 MB/sec
Texel Rate 140800 Mtexels/sec 161280 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 51200 Mpixels/sec 35840 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 2816 2304
Texture Mapping Units 176 144
Render Output Units 64 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 512-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 14 nm
Transistors 6200 million 5700 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.2 DirectX 12.0
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.3 OpenGL 4.5

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon R9 290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon RX 480

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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