GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, 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 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 10836 (571%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 159 Watts (137%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 390 8G should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 285504 (290%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is a lot (more or less 456%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 131200 (456%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42400 (196%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.