GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 590, which uses a 12 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1469 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this card. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 590 should theoretically be a little bit better than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be quite a bit (about 47%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67408 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 will be much (approximately 53%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 590, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25056 (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.