GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (104%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 285 2GB should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be quite a bit (about 31%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16160 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (31%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.