GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (118%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (about 57%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24800 (57%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (152%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount 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 ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.