GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which has a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 590		6680 points
	Difference: 3929 (59%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (22%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 590 should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon R9 290X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8320 (3%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (about 81%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63104 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the Radeon R9 290X, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7072 (14%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.