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Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

The Radeon R9 280X makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X 100 Watts
Radeon R9 280X 250 Watts
Difference: 150 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 288000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X 153600 MB/sec
Difference: 134400 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (more or less 60%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X 68000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 40800 (60%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at AA, and be able to handle the same screen resolutions. (explain)

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

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Radeon R9 280X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 M290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon R9 280X Radeon R9 M290X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year October 2013 May 1 2014
Code Name Tahiti XTL Neptune XT
Memory 3072 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 850 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 6000 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 100 watts
Bandwidth 288000 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 108800 Mtexels/sec 68000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 27200 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 2048 1280
Texture Mapping Units 128 80
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 28 nm
Transistors 4313 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.2 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.3 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon R9 280X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 M290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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