GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M390X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M390X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32384 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is much (approximately 87%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43136 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is superior to the Radeon R9 M390X, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13920 (60%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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.