GeForce GTX Titan Black vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 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

GeForce GTX Titan Black		11666 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 1057 (10%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX Titan Black		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX Titan Black, in theory, should be a bit faster than the Radeon R9 290X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan Black		336000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX Titan Black will be a lot (approximately 52%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan Black		213360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72560 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a bit (more or less 20%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX Titan Black, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX Titan Black		42672 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8528 (20%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated 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 bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.