Radeon R7 370 4G vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all 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 made up of 1280 SPUs, 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 R7 370 4G		110 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 370 4G, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a small bit (approximately 9%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 370 4G. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 370 4G is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (15%)

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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number 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 applied in a 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 calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.