Geforce GTX 680 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 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 290		9876 points
Geforce GTX 680		7650 points
	Difference: 2226 (29%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		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 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 should be much faster than the Geforce GTX 680 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 680 should be a little bit (about 1%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Geforce GTX 680		128768 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 768 (1%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is quite a bit (about 59%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Geforce GTX 680, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.