GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be much better than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (approximately 102%) more effective at texture 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 should be a lot (approximately 183%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, and should be able to handle higher 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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.