Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised 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 670		170 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 670 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be much (about 51%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34480 (51%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be a small bit (more or less 8%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M290X, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (8%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of 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 speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.