GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (104%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 285 2GB should theoretically be a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 5376 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (approximately 31%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16160 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce GTX 285 2GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.