GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is quite a bit (more or less 673%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59200 (673%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (518%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.