GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

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 290		9876 points
GeForce GTX 980M		9476 points
	Difference: 400 (4%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 128 (83%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 980M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 192000 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (approximately 28%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 980M. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28352 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be much (approximately 30%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15232 (30%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.