GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which has a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 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 590		6680 points
	Difference: 3196 (48%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

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

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (more or less 65%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50304 (65%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the Radeon R9 290, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.