GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which has a core clock speed of 723 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M390X will be 150% faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be much (about 21%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16032 (21%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be quite a bit (approximately 81%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10384 (81%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.