GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (122%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 89600 (140%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be a bit (about 13%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8512 (13%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (more or less 113%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 860M, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14448 (113%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.