Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (300%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon R9 M280X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 232000 (264%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit (about 154%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 77600 (154%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (256%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.