GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation 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 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

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 will be 66% faster than the GeForce GTX 580 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (more or less 159%) faster with regards to 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 using 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 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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.