Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, 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

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (more or less 70%) faster with regards to AF 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 quite a bit (more or less 70%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB, and also should be able to handle 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes 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 clock 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 better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.