Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (about 70%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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 transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.