Geforce GTX 670 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 uses a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 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 GTX 670		7351 points
	Difference: 2525 (34%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Geforce GTX 670		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 16 (123%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 670		170 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (76%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 will be 67% faster than the Geforce GTX 670 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (more or less 25%) faster with regards to AF than the Geforce GTX 670. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25520 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the Geforce GTX 670, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21920 (75%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.