GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 71 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 49920 (48%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (about 74%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28832 (74%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12512 (85%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.