Radeon R9 390X 8G vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 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)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (175%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 390X 8G will be 150% quicker than the Radeon R9 M290X overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 230400 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should be quite a bit (approximately 172%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 116800 (172%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390X 8G is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (147%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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