Radeon HD 7770 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of 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 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 HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X should be 113% faster than the Radeon HD 7770 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (113%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be quite a bit (approximately 70%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (about 70%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7770, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.