GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 295X2, which has GPU clock speed of 1018 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 295X2		21205 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 10338 (95%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 355 Watts (245%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 295X2 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 416000 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 should be a lot (about 228%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 249136 (228%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be much (approximately 94%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 970, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 63104 (94%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.