GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		6013 points
	Difference: 4596 (76%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X will be 122% faster than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (about 37%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38320 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (more or less 133%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29240 (133%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.