GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 290X		10609 points
GeForce GTX 960		7627 points
	Difference: 2982 (39%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960		154 Sol/s
	Difference: 215 (140%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		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 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be much (approximately 95%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68672 (95%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.