Radeon R9 380X vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380X will be 19% quicker than the Radeon R9 M290X overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X is quite a bit (approximately 83%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56160 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380X is superior to the Radeon R9 M290X, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (14%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.