GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 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 R9 290X		10609 points
GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
	Difference: 3929 (59%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon R9 290X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8320 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (about 81%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63104 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7072 (14%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.