GeForce GT 640 DDR3 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 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 R9 290X		10609 points
GeForce GT 640 DDR3		1560 points
	Difference: 9049 (580%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		65 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 235 Watts (362%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X should be 461% quicker than the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 640 DDR3		57024 MB/sec
	Difference: 262976 (461%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a lot (approximately 389%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 640 DDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 640 DDR3		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 112000 (389%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be much (about 256%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 640 DDR3, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 640 DDR3		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (256%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.