GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 980M		9476 points
	Difference: 1133 (12%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 214 (138%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 192000 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is much (more or less 41%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 980M. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41152 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is quite a bit (approximately 30%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 290X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15232 (30%)

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 transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.