GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 480, which features core clock speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 480 should theoretically perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 295 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
	Difference: 38368 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be quite a bit (about 75%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 295. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69120 (75%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3584 (11%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.