Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 theoretically perform 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 quite a bit (approximately 70%) better 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 is a lot (about 70%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.