Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 470, which has a clock speed of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1650 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, 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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon RX 470		11756 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 1147 (11%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon RX 470		289 Sol/s
	Difference: 80 (28%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon RX 470		26 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (12%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X will be 52% quicker than the Radeon RX 470 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a bit (more or less 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon RX 470. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22272 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is much (more or less 73%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 470, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 470		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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.