GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs 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 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 8712 (459%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 184 Watts (159%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X is 225% quicker than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 221504 (225%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (approximately 389%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 112000 (389%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (137%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.