GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of 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 560		3030 points
	Difference: 6846 (226%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 560 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 191872 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (more or less 182%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82640 (182%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25280 (98%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its 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 the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.