GeForce 820M vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (567%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 820M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 137600 (860%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (about 491%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 820M. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56496 (491%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce 820M, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24324 (846%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.