Radeon R9 M290X vs Radeon RX 470 4GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 470 4GB, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 926 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1650 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon RX 470 4GB		120 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 470 4GB should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		211200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (38%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB will be quite a bit (about 74%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		118528 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50528 (74%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 4GB is a little bit (about 9%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M290X, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 470 4GB		29632 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2432 (9%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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