GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation 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 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should 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 will be much (about 90%) better at texture filtering 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 just a bit (approximately 15%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 970M, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.