Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, 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

Geforce GTX 690		13111 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 3235 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 690 should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 290 overall. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64512 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 will be a lot (about 83%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 106240 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (14%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.