Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 will be 72% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 110400 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (more or less 74%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50400 (74%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (9%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.