GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2560 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation 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 290		9876 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 4813 (95%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (114%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 660 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 175808 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a lot (approximately 63%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49600 (63%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (approximately 118%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27680 (118%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.