GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X should be a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980M in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (about 47%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, by a large margin. (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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 a second.

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