Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270 should be 12% quicker than the Radeon R9 M390X overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (12%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be a lot (approximately 29%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20544 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be a lot (about 24%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M390X, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5664 (24%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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