GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 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 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 480 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is quite a bit (approximately 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

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is a better choice, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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