Radeon HD 4770 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X is 200% quicker than the Radeon HD 4770 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (approximately 183%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4770. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44000 (183%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (127%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.