GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 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

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 390 8G should in theory be much better 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 is much (about 47%) faster with regards to 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

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.