Radeon R9 285 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 285 should theoretically perform a little bit faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be much (about 51%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34816 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 285 is superior to the Radeon R9 M290X, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2176 (8%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.