Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs 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 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270 should in theory perform a little bit faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be a bit (approximately 6%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per 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 called 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.