GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X will be 20% quicker than the GeForce GTX 980M overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is a lot (approximately 47%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31648 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be much (more or less 144%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M290X, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39232 (144%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 video card could possibly record to the local memory in a 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 clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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.