GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with GPU clock 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 GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X will be 60% quicker than the GeForce GTX 870M in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (60%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be quite a bit (approximately 55%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37392 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a little bit (approximately 20%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 870M, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4616 (20%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.