GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which comes with a clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1750 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 215 Watts (143%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon RX 480 4GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 98944 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is quite a bit (more or less 108%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83584 (108%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22432 (63%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.