GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		210 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X is 7% faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		144000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (more or less 66%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		40992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27008 (66%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 is just a bit (approximately 8%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M290X, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2080 (8%)

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 largest amount of data (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. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.