Radeon R7 370 4G vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 370 4G will be 17% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is just a bit (approximately 9%) better at texture 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

The Radeon R7 370 4G will be just a bit (approximately 15%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M290X, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within 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 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.