GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 315 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 128320 (508%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot (approximately 580%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58000 (580%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (approximately 444%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 315, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22200 (444%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.