GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2560 Stream Processors, 160 Texture Address Units, 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 290		9876 points
GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
	Difference: 2249 (29%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 129 (84%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960		11 Mh/s
	Difference: 18 (164%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 960 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (about 77%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55872 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be much (more or less 42%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 960, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15136 (42%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.