Radeon R7 260X vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (48%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a bit (about 10%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (55%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.