GeForce GTX 1070 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 1070		18174 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 8298 (84%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1070		436 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 153 (54%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1070		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 1070 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1070		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1070 will be quite a bit (about 41%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		180720 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52720 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1070 should be a lot (about 88%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1070		96384 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 45184 (88%)

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 across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one 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 better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.