Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

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

Geforce GTX 690		13111 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 3235 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 690 is 20% faster than the Radeon R9 290 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64512 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is a lot (approximately 83%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 106240 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (14%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.