GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

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 290		9876 points
GeForce GTX 950		6536 points
	Difference: 3340 (51%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 950		10 Mh/s
	Difference: 19 (190%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 950		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 128 (83%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 210 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 should be 203% quicker than the GeForce GTX 950 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 214272 (203%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a lot (more or less 160%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78848 (160%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18432 (56%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.