Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 will be 108% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is quite a bit (more or less 88%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60000 (88%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (88%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.