Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 is 344% faster than the Radeon R9 M270X overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 248000 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a lot (more or less 341%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M270X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99000 (341%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (about 341%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M270X, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39600 (341%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.