Radeon R7 240 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 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should be 433% faster than the Radeon R7 240 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (approximately 366%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53400 (366%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the Radeon R7 240, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21360 (366%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.