Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 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 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 is 17% quicker than the Radeon R9 M290X in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be just a bit (about 6%) better at AF 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 a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270 is a better choice, but only just. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at handling 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 could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.