GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 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 390 8G		12733 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 1866 (17%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390 8G		326 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 64 (24%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390 8G		28 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390 8G should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be much (about 47%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50800 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be a little bit (approximately 5%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 390 8G, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (5%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 drawing the pixels (image) on 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 ability to get to the maximum fill rate.