GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M290X should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 67584 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a little bit (more or less 2%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1184 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6208 (23%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 higher screen resolutions.

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

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