GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

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

GeForce GTX 1080		21942 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 11333 (107%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		553 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
	Difference: 184 (50%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 1080		20 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (45%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1080		180 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1080 should perform a bit faster than the Radeon R9 290X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		327680 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 7680 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 will be quite a bit (approximately 83%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 116320 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1080 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51648 (101%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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