Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (more or less 70%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (approximately 70%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.