Radeon HD 4890 2GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 4890 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (more or less 70%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4890 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (70%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.