GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 127616 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a lot (more or less 159%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78592 (159%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (more or less 38%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14144 (38%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.