Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised 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
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (more or less 24%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16480 (24%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a bit (approximately 4%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M290X, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 960 (4%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.