Radeon R9 390 8G vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (267%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 390 8G should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 M280X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 296000 (336%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be a lot (approximately 217%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 109600 (217%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 49600 (344%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video 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 ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.