GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 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 970		10867 points
Radeon R9 380 4G		8837 points
	Difference: 2030 (23%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 380 4G		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (31%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon R9 380 4G overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a bit (more or less 1%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 380 4G. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 560 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be much (more or less 116%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 380 4G, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36160 (116%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.