GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
GeForce GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 9156 (630%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (183%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 262272 (454%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (approximately 462%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 115744 (462%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is superior to the GeForce GTS 450, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38672 (309%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number 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 graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.