GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 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 390X 8G		13555 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 2688 (25%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390X 8G		330 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 68 (26%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390X 8G		32 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 13 (68%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is much (approximately 69%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75600 (69%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same pixel fill rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at FSAA, and be capable of handling the same resolutions. (explain)

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 transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.