GeForce GTX 980 Ti vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which features a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation 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

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		17120 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 7244 (73%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		425 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 142 (50%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 980 Ti		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (32%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti should in theory perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 290 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		336000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti should be quite a bit (more or less 38%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		176000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48000 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti should be a lot (about 88%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		96000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44800 (88%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.