GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which comes with a clock speed of 1018 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 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 295X2		21205 points
GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
	Difference: 10338 (95%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 355 Watts (245%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 295X2 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 416000 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be much (about 228%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 970. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 249136 (228%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 63104 (94%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.