GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2560 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

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 Ti		6013 points
	Difference: 3863 (64%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

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

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a lot (about 25%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25520 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (more or less 133%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29240 (133%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.