GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which has clock speeds of 1018 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units 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 295X2		21205 points
GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
	Difference: 7653 (56%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 335 Watts (203%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 295X2 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 416000 (186%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is quite a bit (approximately 149%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 214208 (149%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is quite a bit (more or less 81%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 980, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 58240 (81%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.