GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which features clock 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 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 970M		7520 points
	Difference: 3089 (41%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (more or less 90%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66880 (90%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be just a bit (more or less 15%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 970M, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6848 (15%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.