GeForce 9800 GT 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 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
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		105 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (approximately 102%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34400 (102%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (approximately 183%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GT 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 1GB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (183%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.