Radeon R9 M280X vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 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 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X will be 75% faster than the Radeon R9 M280X in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 65600 (75%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (about 35%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (35%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (approximately 89%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M280X, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (89%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.