Radeon HD 7770 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X will be 113% quicker than the Radeon HD 7770 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (113%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (more or less 70%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7770. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (approximately 70%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7770, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.