GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 590, which uses a 12 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1469 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 2000 MHz on this particular model. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960		120 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 590 should be 134% faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960		112000 MB/sec
	Difference: 150144 (134%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is quite a bit (approximately 193%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		72128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 139408 (193%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 will be quite a bit (more or less 30%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 960, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960		36064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10944 (30%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.