GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 590, which has core speeds of 1469 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 590 should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38144 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 will be a lot (about 47%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 980. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67408 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (approximately 53%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 590, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25056 (53%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.