Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (140%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M395X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a lot (about 38%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M395X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35456 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be a lot (about 121%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M395X, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28064 (121%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record 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 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.