GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

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 R9 290X		10609 points
GeForce GTX 560		3030 points
	Difference: 7579 (250%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 560 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 191872 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a lot (about 210%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 95440 (210%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be much (more or less 98%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 560, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25280 (98%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.