GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 7979 (421%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 184 Watts (159%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 221504 (225%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (more or less 344%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (more or less 137%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29600 (137%)

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 transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 reach the max fill rate.