GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		143 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should be 142% faster than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		63360 MB/sec
	Difference: 90240 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be much (about 176%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		24624 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43376 (176%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (approximately 165%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTS (G80) 640MB		10260 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16940 (165%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.