GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 590, which uses a 12 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1469 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this card. 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 980		165 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 590, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is a lot (approximately 47%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67408 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be a lot (about 53%) more effective at AA than the Radeon RX 590, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25056 (53%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.