GeForce GTX 1050 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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

Radeon R9 290		9876 points
GeForce GTX 1050		6657 points
	Difference: 3219 (48%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050		75 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 205312 (179%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (about 136%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 1050. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050		54160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73840 (136%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a bit (approximately 18%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 1050, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050		43328 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7872 (18%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.