GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which features core speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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

Radeon R9 390X 8G		13555 points
GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
	Difference: 3 (0%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390X 8G		32 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
	Difference: 12 (60%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		408 Sol/s
Radeon R9 390X 8G		330 Sol/s
	Difference: 78 (24%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (71%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is a lot (more or less 28%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40672 (28%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is superior to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4864 (7%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses 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 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.