GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator 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 560 Ti		3466 points
	Difference: 6410 (185%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti		170 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (76%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 is 150% quicker than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		128256 MB/sec
	Difference: 191744 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (about 143%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		52608 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75392 (143%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is quite a bit (approximately 95%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti		26304 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24896 (95%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.