GeForce GTX 880M vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 880M		130 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M290X should perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 880M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 880M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 880M should be much (about 80%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M290X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		122112 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54112 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 880M is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 880M		30528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3328 (12%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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