GeForce 8800 GS vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that 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 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should in theory perform much faster than the GeForce 8800 GS overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (about 158%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GS. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (158%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce 8800 GS, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20600 (312%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.