Radeon HD 6850 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 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 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 27 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (approximately 83%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30800 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a bit (more or less 10%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6850, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.