GeForce GTX 980 Ti 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 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 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

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		17120 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 6511 (61%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		80 FPS
Radeon R9 290X		60 FPS
	Difference: 20 (33%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		425 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
	Difference: 56 (15%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		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 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti is 5% quicker than the Radeon R9 290X overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti is quite a bit (more or less 25%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		176000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti will be quite a bit (more or less 88%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290X, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		96000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.