Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (51%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be much (about 35%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be just a bit (about 6%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M290X, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.