GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, 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

Radeon R9 390 8G		12733 points
GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
	Difference: 6053 (91%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 390 8G should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GTX 590 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
	Difference: 55680 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is quite a bit (about 106%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82304 (106%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5728 (10%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen 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 of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.