GeForce GTX 460 SE vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs 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 460 SE		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 SE in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 44800 (41%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be much (more or less 118%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 SE. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		31200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (118%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce GTX 460 SE, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 SE		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (31%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.