GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which features clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 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 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

In theory, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should be 71% faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should be quite a bit (approximately 69%) better at AF 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 the exact same pixel rate, so theoretically they should be equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be capable of handling the same screen 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated 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 video 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.