GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 590, which makes use of a 12 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1469 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this model. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 590 should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be a lot (about 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

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.