Radeon R9 M290X vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M380, which comes with a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M380 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (more or less 70%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 M380. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the Radeon R9 M380, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.