Radeon R9 M290X vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which has a core clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 75776 (49%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be a lot (approximately 137%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 93280 (137%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB will be a lot (more or less 32%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 M290X, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8640 (32%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.