GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon RX 5700 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5700 XT, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1605 MHz and a GDDR6 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 7 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon RX 5700 XT		225 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 5700 XT should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		458752 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 234752 (105%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5700 XT is much (more or less 78%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		256800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 112672 (78%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5700 XT will be much (about 43%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 980, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT		102720 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30656 (43%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.