Radeon R9 390X 8G vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (175%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 230400 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be quite a bit (about 172%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 116800 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should be quite a bit (about 147%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M290X, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (147%)

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 moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.