GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 1080		180 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (80%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1080 should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		327680 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 174080 (113%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 will be a lot (more or less 278%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 189120 (278%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 should be a lot (about 278%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M290X, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75648 (278%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.