Radeon HD 4870 X2 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, 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 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 250 Watts (250%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 76800 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a small bit (about 13%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is just a bit (approximately 13%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 X2, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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