Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 580, which has a core clock speed of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 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 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

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X is 22% faster than the Radeon RX 580 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be a lot (approximately 29%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is a better choice, by far. (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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.