GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which comes with core speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (267%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 297984 (346%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be quite a bit (more or less 177%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 117984 (177%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390X 8G is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33792 (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.