GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290X should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 127616 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (approximately 185%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91392 (185%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14144 (38%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 get to the max fill rate.