GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with 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 is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (115%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 470 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 19680 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be much (about 100%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34008 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a small bit (about 12%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 470, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2920 (12%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.