GeForce GT 640 DDR3 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units 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 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

The Radeon R9 290 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GT 640 DDR3 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (more or less 344%) faster with regards to 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 should be quite a bit (about 256%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 640 DDR3, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number 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 amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.