GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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 580		4956 points
	Difference: 4920 (99%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 580 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

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

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied 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 higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.