Radeon R5 M230 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon R5 M230 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (860%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be quite a bit (about 336%) better at AF than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52400 (336%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (approximately 772%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R5 M230, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24080 (772%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.