Radeon R7 M265 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon R7 M265 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M265		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (380%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (about 291%) better at AF than the Radeon R7 M265. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M265		17400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50600 (291%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M265		5800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21400 (369%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.