GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which has a core clock speed 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 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 1080		21942 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 12066 (122%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		553 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 270 (95%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 1080		20 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (45%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1080		180 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 1080 should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 290 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		327680 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 7680 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 is quite a bit (approximately 101%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 129120 (101%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 will be a lot (more or less 101%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 51648 (101%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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