GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X will be 166% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 95872 (166%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (about 171%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42944 (171%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (about 117%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14672 (117%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant 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.