GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs 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 960M		4350 points
	Difference: 6259 (144%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 235 Watts (362%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should be 400% faster than the GeForce GTX 960M overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256000 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (about 221%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 96960 (221%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is superior to the GeForce GTX 960M, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33664 (192%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.