GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1425 MHz on this particular model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 380 4G		8837 points
GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
	Difference: 2157 (32%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 380 4G overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 145920 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is much (approximately 40%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30944 (40%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the Radeon R9 380 4G, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27232 (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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated 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 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 in a 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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.