Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with 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 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 is 17% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be a little bit (approximately 6%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 is a bit (approximately 6%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M290X, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.