GeForce GTX 1660 Ti vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		120 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 180 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		294912 MB/sec
	Difference: 25088 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti should be a bit (approximately 13%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		144000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (13%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		72000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (41%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.