GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (243%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (approximately 102%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34400 (102%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (approximately 183%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (183%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.