Radeon R9 290X 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 speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should be 108% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be much (approximately 107%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72800 (107%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (more or less 88%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M290X, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record 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 sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.