GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
GeForce GTX 460		2557 points
	Difference: 8052 (315%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 460 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 233600 (270%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is much (more or less 272%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103000 (272%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be much (about 216%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35000 (216%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.