Radeon HD 7950 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 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 HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 will be 56% quicker than the Radeon R9 M290X in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is much (more or less 32%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (32%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a small bit (about 6%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7950, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.