GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2816 Stream Processors, 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 290X		10609 points
GeForce GTX 970M		7520 points
	Difference: 3089 (41%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be much (approximately 90%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66880 (90%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a bit (about 15%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 970M, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6848 (15%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.