GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 590, which comes with a clock speed of 1469 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 12 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 590 is 17% faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be much (more or less 94%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 102336 (94%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (more or less 43%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 590, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20192 (43%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.