GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 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

Radeon R9 290		9876 points
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 7979 (421%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 184 Watts (159%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 221504 (225%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (approximately 344%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (137%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.