Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M385X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (approximately 108%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 M385X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66400 (108%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is a lot (approximately 191%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M385X, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (191%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.