GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 295X2, which comes with a clock frequency of 1018 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory 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

The Radeon R9 295X2 should in theory be quite a bit 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%) faster with regards to AF 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 a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is a better choice, by far. (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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.