GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which comes with clock speeds of 1018 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 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

The Radeon R9 295X2 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (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%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 should be much (about 81%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 980, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.