Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses 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 as well as 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 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (more or less 60%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40800 (60%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have exactly the same pixel fill rate, so in theory they should be equally good at at full screen anti-aliasing, and be able to handle the same resolutions. (explain)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.