Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Geforce GTX 690		13111 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 2502 (24%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 690 will be 20% faster than the Radeon R9 290X in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64512 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is much (approximately 66%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 93440 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (14%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.