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GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

The GeForce GTX 980M uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 1038 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should theoretically be much 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 is much (more or less 28%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 980M. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, and very much so. (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

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GeForce GTX 980M

Amazon.com

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Radeon R9 290

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 980M Radeon R9 290
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year October 7 2014 November 2013
Code Name GM204 Hawaii PRO
Memory 4096 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 1038 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 100 watts 300 watts
Bandwidth 128000 MB/sec 320000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 99648 Mtexels/sec 128000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 66432 Mpixels/sec 51200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1536 2560
Texture Mapping Units 96 160
Render Output Units 64 64
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 512-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 28 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 6200 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 12 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.5 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 980M

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 290

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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