GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 295X2, which features a core clock speed of 1018 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up 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 980		13552 points
	Difference: 7653 (56%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 335 Watts (203%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 295X2 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 980 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 416000 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be a lot (about 149%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 214208 (149%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 58240 (81%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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