GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 233984 (272%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is much (more or less 111%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73984 (111%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17792 (53%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.