GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (11%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 47872 (45%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (approximately 38%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18848 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5568 (20%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.