Radeon R5 M230 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which features a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

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

Radeon R9 290		9876 points
Radeon R5 M230		1281 points
	Difference: 8595 (671%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 will be 1900% quicker than the Radeon R5 M230 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 304000 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is a lot (more or less 721%) better at AF than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 112400 (721%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a lot (approximately 1541%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R5 M230, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48080 (1541%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range 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 worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.