GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M390X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M390X should be 19% faster than the GeForce GTX 470 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 26080 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is a lot (more or less 172%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58552 (172%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1144 (5%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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