GeForce GTX 480 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 uses a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 480		3650 points
	Difference: 9083 (249%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 390 8G should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 480 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 206592 (116%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be a lot (about 281%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 118000 (281%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30400 (90%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.