Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running 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
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 690 should be 150% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 230912 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 should be much (more or less 244%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 166240 (244%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (115%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.