Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270 should be a little bit faster than the Radeon R9 M290X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (17%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be a bit (about 6%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be a bit (about 6%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M290X, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.