GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (82%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should be 380% faster than the GeForce GTX 950M overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (380%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (approximately 86%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31440 (86%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be much (approximately 86%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 950M, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12576 (86%)

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 in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.