GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 465 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 217408 (212%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a lot (approximately 427%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 114092 (427%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be a lot (approximately 164%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 465, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31776 (164%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.