GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 Stream Processors, 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.

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

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be much better 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 should be quite a bit (more or less 185%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a lot (approximately 38%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 580, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.