NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 vs AMD Radeon R9 390X

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB vs AMD Radeon R9 390X 8 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

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Specifications
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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2262 points

3379% significantly better overall score

65 points

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

47 FPS

22 FPS significantly higher Flux Core frame rate

25 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

35 FPS

12 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

23 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

31 FPS

1 FPS slightly higher City frame rate

30 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

28 FPS

14 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

14 FPS

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

3647 points

4254 points

16% slightly higher 3DMark Graphics score

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1050 MHz

Identical

1050 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1178 MHz

12% slightly higher boost clock speed

1050 MHz

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB

8 GiB

100% significantly more memory

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

256 Bit

512 Bit

100% significantly larger memory bus width

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

224.4 GB/s

384 GB/s

71% significantly higher memory bandwidth

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

145 W

89% significantly lower TDP

275 W

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

65.97 Gigapixels/s

67.2 Gigapixels/s

1% slightly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

122.5 Gigatexels/s

184.8 Gigatexels/s

50% significantly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

3.92 TFLOPS

5.91 TFLOPS

50% significantly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1664

2816

69% significantly more shading units

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

104

176

69% significantly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

14% slightly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

193rd of 586

530th of 586

Family

The product line

Radeon R9 300 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

2015 June

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 390X comparison

For gaming, the GeForce GTX 970 graphics card is better than the Radeon R9 390X in our tests.

By comparing the spec sheets, both the GeForce GTX 970 and the Radeon R9 390X have the same base clock speed. Despite this, the GeForce GTX 970 has a slightly higher boost clock speed: the maximum frequency the chip can reach if power delivery and thermals allow.

As stated by the manufacturer, the Radeon R9 390X has significantly more memory with 8 GiB of memory compared to 4 GiB. Lots of memory is good when playing at high resolutions or with many monitors.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 970 has a significantly lower TDP at 145 W when compared to the Radeon R9 390X at 275 W. Heat output doesn't match power consumption directly but, it's a good estimate.

In conclusion, all specs and GPU benchmarks considered, will recommend the GeForce GTX 970 over the Radeon R9 390X.