GeForce GTX 295 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 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 189 Watts (189%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 295 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70176 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 should be a lot (approximately 36%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24160 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 will be a bit (more or less 19%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 M290X, and able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5056 (19%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.