GeForce GTX 1660 Ti vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		120 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		294912 MB/sec
	Difference: 25088 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti should be a small bit (more or less 13%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		144000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is a lot (approximately 41%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 290, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		72000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (41%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.