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GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 290
Intro
The GeForce GTX 970 has core speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1664 SPUs along with 104 TAUs and 64 ROPs.Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.
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 970 |
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10867 points |
| Radeon R9 290 |
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9876 points |
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Zcash Mining Hash Rate
| Radeon R9 290 |
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283 Sol/s |
| GeForce GTX 970 |
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262 Sol/s |
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Ethereum Mining Hash Rate
| Radeon R9 290 |
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29 Mh/s |
| GeForce GTX 970 |
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19 Mh/s |
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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks
Power Consumption (Max TDP)
| GeForce GTX 970 |
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145 Watts |
| Radeon R9 290 |
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300 Watts |
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Memory Bandwidth
The Radeon R9 290 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)
| Radeon R9 290 |
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320000 MB/sec |
| GeForce GTX 970 |
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224000 MB/sec |
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Texel Rate
The Radeon R9 290 will be just a bit (more or less 17%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)| Radeon R9 290 |
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128000 Mtexels/sec |
| GeForce GTX 970 |
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109200 Mtexels/sec |
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Pixel Rate
The GeForce GTX 970 will be a lot (more or less 31%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)| GeForce GTX 970 |
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67200 Mpixels/sec |
| Radeon R9 290 |
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51200 Mpixels/sec |
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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
GeForce GTX 970Amazon.com
Check prices at:
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Radeon R9 290Amazon.com
Check prices at:
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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.
Specifications
| Model | GeForce GTX 970 | Radeon R9 290 |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | nVidia | AMD |
| Year | September 2014 | November 2013 |
| Code Name | GM204-200 | Hawaii PRO |
| Memory | 4096 MB | 4096 MB |
| Core Speed | 1050 MHz | 800 MHz |
| Memory Speed | 7000 MHz | 5000 MHz |
| Power (Max TDP) | 145 watts | 300 watts |
| Bandwidth | 224000 MB/sec | 320000 MB/sec |
| Texel Rate | 109200 Mtexels/sec | 128000 Mtexels/sec |
| Pixel Rate | 67200 Mpixels/sec | 51200 Mpixels/sec |
| Unified Shaders | 1664 | 2560 |
| Texture Mapping Units | 104 | 160 |
| Render Output Units | 64 | 64 |
| Bus Type | GDDR5 | GDDR5 |
| Bus Width | 256-bit | 512-bit |
| Fab Process | 28 nm | 28 nm |
| Transistors | 5200 million | 6200 million |
| Bus | PCIe 3.0 x16 | PCIe 3.0 x16 |
| DirectX Version | DirectX 11.2 | DirectX 11.2 |
| OpenGL Version | OpenGL 4.5 | OpenGL 4.3 |
Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.
GeForce GTX 970Amazon.com
Check prices at:
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Radeon R9 290Amazon.com
Check prices at:
|
Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.
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Comments
7 Responses to “GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 290”Still not sure which card to choose from! My PSU can handle both fine! But I do like the lower wattage the 970 uses and the slightly higher performance over the 290. But the R9 290 is $70 less in price for basically the same performance. So I am just not sure what to choose! I do like AMD's picture quality better! But Nvidia is much better with Anti-Aliasing, And the Nvidia Drivers are much much less buggy. But the AMD card has much faster memory bandwidth that will perform much better at higher resolution! (CONFUSED)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If Nvidia would just price the 970 right I would not have this problem! So I will more than likely save my money and buy the R9 290.
I came here for answers and I'm just as confused as you Blair.
Any chance of comparing the R9 290 with the EVGA variants like the SSC or FTW & FTW+?
I gave myself a headache after 3 weeks of research and finally bought the SSC.
I'd like to know if I got screwed
i went with the r9 290 (asus dcuII) and have had nothing but troubles with it. constant freezes and black screens and reboots. i'll be returning it and exchanging it with the 970. its one thing you won't read in reviews, but do some googling about 290 issues.
Just to put your minds at rest, I have an R9 290 and it is perfectly stable and very powerful. One key thing you need to make sure is that your power supply is good enough though, because the R9 290 is a power hungry monster unfortunately. A friend has the black screen issues and it was simply that his PSU was not up to the job.
Put simply the 970 is *marginally* (and I mean it's so close it's ridiculous) better than the R9 290, but at the lower price point I would get the cheaper R9 290. If the 970 comes down in price, then I think that's the obvious choice.
everybody who has blackscreen with r9 290 needs to flash their cards,thats it. If your card is not flashed that mean you're not even taking care of your hardware.
Flash a brand new card i just bought? Thats like telling me i have to give a major service to a brand new car with 0 km/ miles on the clock, no thanks, ill happily stay with nvidia, never never had a problem with there card
I'm upgrading from a R9 280X (powercolor) and went with the 970. Quiet and cooler was the deciding point. The R9 performed well but turned my PC into a space heater. Temp was an issue and the thing was noisy. It would easily go above 95c if you let it. I have tried 270X crossfire and it does well when there are no issues with crossfire (. One quiet, cool powerful card with no issues seemed the way to go.