Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs 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 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 680		7650 points
	Difference: 2226 (29%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 13 (81%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 should be 66% quicker than the Geforce GTX 680 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 127744 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 will be a small bit (more or less 1%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 768 (1%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the Geforce GTX 680, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19008 (59%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.