GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290, which features core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs 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 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should theoretically be a lot better 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 will be much (more or less 205%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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 high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the GeForce GTX 480, 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.