Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (140%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M390X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (approximately 52%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M390X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48256 (52%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28064 (121%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.