Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, 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
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 194 Watts (194%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 5970 should be much faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be a lot (about 241%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 164000 (241%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be a lot (more or less 241%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M290X, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 65600 (241%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.