GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs 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
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M290X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 23808 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be much (approximately 62%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26000 (62%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (24%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 video 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 most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.