GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce GTX 660 Ti overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should be a lot (about 51%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34480 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5240 (24%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.