GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which has a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation 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 980M		9476 points
	Difference: 1133 (12%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 214 (138%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X is 150% faster than the GeForce GTX 980M in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (approximately 41%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 980M. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41152 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.