Radeon R7 240 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (more or less 366%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53400 (366%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21360 (366%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.