GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 290		9876 points
GeForce GTX 850M		3340 points
	Difference: 6536 (196%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 850M		49 Sol/s
	Difference: 234 (478%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 260 Watts (650%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 288000 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit (about 265%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 850M. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92960 (265%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37184 (265%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video 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 amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.