GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M390X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (95%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M390X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32384 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be quite a bit (approximately 87%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43136 (87%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13920 (60%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.