Nvidia Titan X vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Nvidia Titan X		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Nvidia Titan X will be 54% faster than the Radeon R9 290 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Nvidia Titan X		491520 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 171520 (54%)

Texel Rate

The Nvidia Titan X will be much (more or less 148%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Nvidia Titan X		317408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 189408 (148%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Nvidia Titan X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Nvidia Titan X		136032 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 84832 (166%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.