Radeon R7 370 4G vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon R7 370 4G		110 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 370 4G will be 17% faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a small bit (about 9%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 370 4G. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (9%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R7 370 4G is superior to the Radeon R9 M290X, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (15%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.