Radeon R9 390 8G vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, 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 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (175%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 390 8G should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G is quite a bit (more or less 135%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92000 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G should be quite a bit (approximately 135%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M290X, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (135%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.