Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units 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 680		7650 points
	Difference: 2959 (39%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

Radeon R9 290X		60 FPS
Geforce GTX 680		38 FPS
	Difference: 22 (58%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Geforce GTX 680		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 13 (81%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Geforce GTX 680		195 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be much better than the Geforce GTX 680 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Geforce GTX 680		192256 MB/sec
	Difference: 127744 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a little bit (more or less 9%) better at texture filtering than the Geforce GTX 680. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12032 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be quite a bit (more or less 59%) more effective at FSAA than the Geforce GTX 680, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Geforce GTX 680		32192 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19008 (59%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.