GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (144%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 is 25% quicker than the Radeon R9 M290X in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38784 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (approximately 38%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18592 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be quite a bit (more or less 36%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M290X, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9856 (36%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over 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 RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.