GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should be 60% quicker than the GeForce GTX 970M overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (60%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M is a small bit (about 9%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5920 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17152 (63%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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 max fill rate.