GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should be 142% quicker than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 90240 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (more or less 176%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43376 (176%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (about 165%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16940 (165%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.