GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2816 SPUs, 176 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 290X		10609 points
GeForce GTX 950		6536 points
	Difference: 4073 (62%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

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

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 950		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 214 (138%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be quite a bit (more or less 186%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91648 (186%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.