Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which features a clock frequency of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1650 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
Radeon RX 470 4GB		270 Sol/s
	Difference: 13 (5%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon RX 470 4GB		27 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		120 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon RX 470 4GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (52%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is a bit (about 8%) more effective at AF than the Radeon RX 470 4GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9472 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is a lot (more or less 73%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 470 4GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21568 (73%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory 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 better 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 can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.