GeForce GTX 980 Ti vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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 980 Ti		17120 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 6511 (61%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		80 FPS
Radeon R9 290X		60 FPS
	Difference: 20 (33%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		425 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
	Difference: 56 (15%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 980 Ti		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (32%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon R9 290X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		336000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti will be much (about 25%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		176000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 Ti is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980 Ti		96000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44800 (88%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.