GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 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 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		13552 points
Radeon R9 390 8G		12733 points
	Difference: 819 (6%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390 8G		28 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (40%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon R9 390 8G		326 Sol/s
	Difference: 82 (25%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390 8G should be 71% quicker than the GeForce GTX 980 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be a little bit (more or less 11%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15872 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8064 (13%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.