GeForce GTX 980 Ti vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 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

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		17120 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 6511 (61%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		80 FPS
Radeon R9 290X		60 FPS
	Difference: 20 (33%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		425 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
	Difference: 56 (15%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 980 Ti		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (32%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti should in theory be just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 290X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		336000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti should be a lot (about 25%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		176000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti will be quite a bit (approximately 88%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 290X, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		96000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44800 (88%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.