GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator 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 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 11333 (107%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		553 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
	Difference: 184 (50%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		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 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 1080 should in theory be a little bit superior to the Radeon R9 290X overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 will be a lot (more or less 83%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 116320 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 will be much (more or less 101%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 290X, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.