GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of 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 480		3650 points
	Difference: 6226 (171%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 480 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 142592 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit (about 205%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 86000 (205%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (more or less 52%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 480, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (52%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.