Radeon HD 4890 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (90%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M290X should be 23% quicker than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (23%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot (about 70%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (70%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be quite a bit (more or less 70%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.