GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		210 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		144000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (more or less 66%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		40992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27008 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 the graphics 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 number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 maximum fill rate.