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Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB comes with a GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory runs at 975 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X 100 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB 190 Watts
Difference: 90 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X 153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB 124800 MB/sec
Difference: 28800 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot (approximately 70%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X 68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB 40000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X 27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB 16000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 11200 (70%)

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

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Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 M290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 4890 1GB Radeon R9 M290X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Apr 2, 2009 May 1 2014
Code Name RV790 XT Neptune XT
Memory 1024 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 1000 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 3900 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 190 watts 100 watts
Bandwidth 124800 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 40000 Mtexels/sec 68000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16000 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 800(160x5) 1280
Texture Mapping Units 40 80
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors 959 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 M290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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