AMD Radeon RX 470
vs
AMD Radeon R9 290

Our Verdict: For the most part, the RX 470 is still capable of playing modern games, but you would have to reduce settings to sustain those higher framerates. If keeping graphics quality settings closer to ultra or high is important, the is an option for upgrade. Upgrading from RX 470 to R9 290 is not recommended as it is less than 30% of improvement in performance. In general, a reasonable upgrade is between 30% and 50% or more to justify the purchase of new hardware. The price/performance ratio is much better for RX 470 .

Game Performance at selected quality settings

AMD Radeon RX 470 / Core i7-6700K @ 4.00GHz

For the most part, the RX 470 is still capable of playing modern games, but you would have to reduce settings to sustain those higher framerates. If keeping graphics quality settings closer to ultra or high is important, there are a few options for upgrades. It appears that the RX 470 is a more capable mid-range card that can play AAA titles at 1080p with 60 frames per second. The price/performance ratio is excellent for RX 470 against the competition in budget mid-range cards. With current 4096 MB RAM, the RX 470 can have very few memory-related bottlenecks in more modern games.

AMD Radeon R9 290 / Core i7-3770K @ 3.50GHz

At 1440p, R9 290 can hit 50-60 fps on pretty much everything at ultra, just without antialiasing, less ambient occlusion and turned down shadows. It is clear that the R9 290 is a significantly more capable high-end card that can play AAA titles at 1080p/1440p with 50-60 frames per second. It is worth noting that the R9 290 is a very power hungry card and requires a decent power supply unit. It is important to know that R9 290 's max load temperature is very high and might require custom cooling solutions. This combination between R9 290 and Intel Core i7-3770K @ 3.50GHz has less than 8% bottleneck in many games and is perfect match to avoid FPS loss. This combination between R9 290 and Intel Core i7-3770K @ 3.50GHz is a perfect match to avoid FPS loss. With current 4096 MB RAM, the R9 290 can have very few memory-related bottlenecks in more modern games.

Board Design

	RX 470	R9 290
Board Number	C940, D000-03, D009-07	C671
Length	9.5 inches 241 mm	10.83 inches 275 mm
Outputs	1x HDMI3x DisplayPort	2x DVI1x HDMI1x DisplayPort
Power Connectors	1x 6-pin	1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin
Slot Width	Dual-slot	Dual-slot
TDP	120 W	275 W

Clock Speeds

	RX 470	R9 290
GPU Clock	926 MHz	947 MHz
Memory Clock	1650 MHz 6600 MHz effective	1250 MHz 5000 MHz effective

Graphics Card

	RX 470	R9 290
Bus Interface	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 3.0 x16
Generation	Arctic Islands (RX 400)	Volcanic Islands (R9 200)
Launch Price	179 USD	399 USD
Production	Active	End-of-life
Release Date	Aug 4th, 2016	Nov 5th, 2013

Graphics Features

	RX 470	R9 290
DirectX	12.0 (12_0)	12.0 (12_0)
OpenCL	2	2
OpenGL	4.5	4.6
Shader Model	6	6
Vulkan	1.1.82	1.1.82

Graphics Processor

	RX 470	R9 290
Architecture	GCN 4.0	GCN 2.0
Die Size	244 mm²	438 mm²
GPU Name	Ellesmere	Hawaii
GPU Variant	Polaris 10 PRO (215-0876204)	Hawaii PRO (215-0852020)
Process Size	14 nm	28 nm
Transistors	5,700 million	6,200 million

Memory

	RX 470	R9 290
Bandwidth	211.2 GB/s	320.0 GB/s
Memory Bus	256 bit	512 bit
Memory Size	4096 MB	4096 MB
Memory Type	GDDR5	GDDR5

Render Config

	RX 470	R9 290
Compute Units	32	40
ROPs	32	64
Shading Units	2048	2560
TMUs	128	160

Theoretical Performance

	RX 470	R9 290
FP32 (float) performance	4,940 GFLOPS	4,849 GFLOPS
FP64 (double) performance	308.7 GFLOPS (1:16)	606.1 GFLOPS (1:8)
Pixel Rate	38.59 GPixel/s	60.61 GPixel/s
Texture Rate	154.4 GTexel/s	151.5 GTexel/s