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GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

The GeForce GTX 980 has a GPU core clock speed of 1126 MHz, and the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM is set to run at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

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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

GeForce GTX 980 13552 points
Radeon R9 290X 10609 points
Difference: 2943 (28%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

GeForce GTX 980 63 FPS
Radeon R9 290X 60 FPS
Difference: 3 (5%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X 29 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 980 20 Mh/s
Difference: 9 (45%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980 408 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290X 369 Sol/s
Difference: 39 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980 165 Watts
Radeon R9 290X 300 Watts
Difference: 135 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X 320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980 224000 MB/sec
Difference: 96000 (43%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be a small bit (approximately 2%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X 140800 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 3328 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (about 41%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 290X, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X 51200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 20864 (41%)

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

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GeForce GTX 980

Amazon.com

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Radeon R9 290X

Amazon.com

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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

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Model GeForce GTX 980 Radeon R9 290X
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year September 2014 October 2013
Code Name GM204-400 Hawaii XT
Memory 4096 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 1126 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 7000 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 165 watts 300 watts
Bandwidth 224000 MB/sec 320000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 144128 Mtexels/sec 140800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 72064 Mpixels/sec 51200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 2048 2816
Texture Mapping Units 128 176
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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high 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 number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

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GeForce GTX 980

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 290X

Amazon.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.

Comments

6 Responses to “GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 290X”
PRNS says:

well, R9 290x much faster than GTX 980, but we see at TDP, GTX 980 can kick out r9 290x to the botom

Scott says:

How is the R9 290X faster, look at reviews, it's clearly not in majority of games.

Warsun says:

Yeah but the GTX 980 does not have higher Unified Shaders.Which means some NPCs may look washed out in games.The Texture Mapping is low.That means some units in games may not have textures on them.So in some intense designed games or programs some characters may be slower in loading in. A 256-bit Bus Width means you wont get as much color an when that bus width is reached you might get a crash.So it doesn't sound that fast in comparison.

WarsunGames says:

The actual power consumption of the GTX 980 is a lie.Under full or medium load.wattage jumps up to 288-310 watts.Not Overclocked.
So that information is not 100% accurate.if you are counting lowest.That would 98 watts.

WarsunGames says:

I Want to point out the AMD R9 290 can run watts from 98- 365 Overclocked.We have video.
The GTX 980
Not overclocked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHqooq1v9YA

R9 290X
overclocked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG_KlGQb3I4

Nate1994 says:

Ignore PRNS, Warsun and WarsunGames they don't have a clue what they are talking about.

1. 290x is not faster than the GTX 980

2. Unified Shaders of 1 architecture are different from another meaning they perform differently eg. 2048 on example A could be equivalent to 1536 on example B.

3. First of all it doesn't make things washed out, just slower. Second, The Texel rate on the 980 is higher. Don't just look at the number of TMUs.

4. TDP isn't power consumption, it is the maximum amount of heat generated by the GPU.

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