GeForce GT 640 DDR3 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs 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 290		9876 points
GeForce GT 640 DDR3		1560 points
	Difference: 8316 (533%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 640 DDR3		65 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 235 Watts (362%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 is 461% faster than the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 640 DDR3		57024 MB/sec
	Difference: 262976 (461%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit (approximately 344%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 640 DDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 640 DDR3		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (about 256%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 640 DDR3, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 640 DDR3		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (256%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.