Radeon HD 5830 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses 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 specific model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (75%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 5830 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (approximately 52%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 5830. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23200 (52%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (113%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.