Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which has a core clock frequency of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon RX 580		13630 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 3021 (28%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
	Difference: 54 (17%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (4%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X will be 22% faster than the Radeon RX 580 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be much (approximately 29%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40208 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (more or less 27%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon RX 580, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10976 (27%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 reach the max fill rate.