GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 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.

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

Radeon R9 290X		60 FPS
GeForce GTX 580		25 FPS
	Difference: 35 (140%)

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
GeForce GTX 580		4956 points
	Difference: 5653 (114%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 580 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (approximately 185%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.