GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 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
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 9408 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a small bit (approximately 15%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3680 (16%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.