GeForce GTX 560 Ti vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti overall. (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 much (about 143%) faster with regards to AF 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 should be much (about 95%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus 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 ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.