AMD Radeon R9 M290X vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile Comparison

FAQ

Q: How does the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile compare to the AMD Radeon R9 M290X in raw compute performance?

A: The recorded data shows a decisive victory for the RTX 4070 Mobile. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the NVIDIA GPU scored 109,197 points, which is 395.7% higher than the R9 M290X's 22,028 points.

Q: Are these two GPUs from the same era or architectural generation?

A: No, they are separated by nearly a decade of development. The RTX 4070 Mobile is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture with a 5 nm process, while the R9 M290X uses the GCN 1.0 architecture on a 28 nm node. The RTX 4070 Mobile was released in January 2023, whereas the R9 M290X came out in January 2014.

Q: What is the difference in memory bandwidth between the two cards?

A: The RTX 4070 Mobile has a significant bandwidth advantage. It features 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 256.0 GB/s. The R9 M290X has 4 GB of GDDR5 on a wider 256-bit bus, but its bandwidth is only 153.6 GB/s.

Q: Which GPU has a higher transistor density, and what does that indicate?

A: The RTX 4070 Mobile has a transistor density of 121.8M per mm², compared to 13.2M per mm² for the R9 M290X. This reflects the much newer manufacturing process and the far more complex design of the NVIDIA chip.

Q: Does the older AMD GPU support modern graphics APIs like Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate?

A: Partially. The R9 M290X supports DirectX 12 (11_1) and Vulkan 1.2.170. The RTX 4070 Mobile is far more advanced, supporting DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), Vulkan 1.4, and OpenGL 4.6.

Q: What is the performance percentile ranking difference between the two cards in the database?

A: The RTX 4070 Mobile sits in the 73rd percentile of all GPUs, while the R9 M290X is in the 68th percentile. This places the NVIDIA card in a higher overall performance tier.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two mobile GPUs is vast. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture, using the AD106 chip manufactured by TSMC on a 5 nm process. In contrast, the AMD Radeon R9 M290X relies on the much older GCN 1.0 architecture, using the Neptune chip also made by TSMC but on a 28 nm process.

The transistor counts illustrate the scale of this difference. The RTX 4070 Mobile integrates 22,900 million transistors on a die size of 188 mm², resulting in a density of 121.8M transistors per mm². The R9 M290X, by comparison, has only 2,800 million transistors on a larger 212 mm² die, yielding a density of just 13.2M per mm². This is a fundamental leap in manufacturing and design complexity.

The NVIDIA chip introduces dedicated hardware that the AMD GPU lacks entirely. The RTX 4070 Mobile includes 36 ray tracing cores and 144 tensor cores, features that are absent from the R9 M290X, which has null entries for both. This means the NVIDIA GPU is equipped for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI-driven workloads, while the older AMD part must handle such tasks through traditional shader processing, if at all.

The compute resources also differ dramatically. The RTX 4070 Mobile has 4,608 shading units, 144 texture mapping units, and 48 ROPs. The R9 M290X has 1,280 shading units, 80 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. This is a 3.6x advantage in shader count, a 1.8x advantage in TMUs, and a 1.5x advantage in ROPs for the NVIDIA card.

The power envelope is surprisingly similar despite the performance gulf. The RTX 4070 Mobile has a TDP of 115 W, while the R9 M290X is rated at 100 W. Both are designed for portable devices, though the NVIDIA part is listed as an IGP (integrated graphics processor) form factor, while the AMD part is an MXM module.

The memory subsystem reflects different design philosophies. The RTX 4070 Mobile uses 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 256.0 GB/s bandwidth. The R9 M290X uses 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus but only achieves 153.6 GB/s. The newer memory technology and higher clock speeds (2000 MHz vs 1200 MHz) allow the NVIDIA card to overcome its narrower bus width.

The bus interface also differs: the RTX 4070 Mobile uses PCIe 4.0 x8, while the R9 M290X uses PCIe 3.0 x16. The production statuses reflect their lifecycles: the RTX 4070 Mobile is listed as Active, while the R9 M290X is End-of-life.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database contains a single direct comparison between these two GPUs, and it is a comprehensive victory for the NVIDIA card.

In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile scored 109,197 points. The AMD Radeon R9 M290X scored 22,028 points. This represents a delta of 395.7%, meaning the RTX 4070 Mobile is nearly four times faster in this compute benchmark. This is not a marginal improvement; it is a generational leap in raw processing capability.

Looking at the broader benchmark context, the RTX 4070 Mobile's average benchmark score across all tests in the database is 27,435. The R9 M290X's average is 23,276. While the OpenCL result shows a massive gap, the average scores are closer because the AMD card has fewer recorded benchmarks, and other tests may not scale as dramatically.

The RTX 4070 Mobile also has a wider benchmark profile. It has recorded scores in Geekbench OpenCL (109,197), Geekbench Vulkan (108,367), Passmark DirectX 10 (116), DirectX 11 (179), DirectX 12 (85), DirectX 9 (223), G2D (763), G3D (19,587), and GPU Compute (8,399). The R9 M290X only has two recorded benchmarks: Geekbench Metal (24,524) and Geekbench OpenCL (22,028).

The nearest rivals for the RTX 4070 Mobile in the database include the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (average score 27,425, delta 0%), the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (27,565, delta -0.5%), the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell (27,135, delta 1.1%), and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 20 (27,839, delta -1.5%). This places the RTX 4070 Mobile in the company of desktop-class GPUs, which is remarkable for a mobile part.

For the R9 M290X, its nearest rivals are the AMD Radeon RX 6600M (23,273, delta 0%), the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 (23,250, delta 0.1%), the NVIDIA P106-100 (23,249, delta 0.1%), and the AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 (23,315, delta -0.2%). These are all much more modest performers, reinforcing the R9 M290X's position as an older, lower-tier part.

Specification Differences

The following fields show where the two GPUs differ in their recorded specifications:

• Chip: AD106 (NVIDIA) vs Neptune (AMD)
• Architecture: Ada Lovelace vs GCN 1.0
• Generation: GeForce 40 Mobile vs Gem System (R9 M200)
• Process Node: 5 nm vs 28 nm
• Transistors: 22,900 million vs 2,800 million
• Die Size: 188 mm² vs 212 mm²
• Transistor Density: 121.8M / mm² vs 13.2M / mm²
• Base Clock: 1395 MHz vs 850 MHz
• Boost Clock: 1695 MHz vs 900 MHz
• Memory Clock: 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective) vs 1200 MHz (4.8 Gbps effective)
• Memory Size: 8 GB vs 4 GB
• Memory Type: GDDR6 vs GDDR5
• Memory Bus Width: 128 bit vs 256 bit
• Memory Bandwidth: 256.0 GB/s vs 153.6 GB/s
• Shading Units: 4608 vs 1280
• TMUs: 144 vs 80
• ROPs: 48 vs 32
• RT Cores: 36 vs null
• Tensor Cores: 144 vs null
• Pixel Rate: 81.36 GPixel/s vs 28.80 GPixel/s
• Texture Rate: 244.1 GTexel/s vs 72.00 GTexel/s
• FP32 Performance: 15.62 TFLOPS vs 2.304 TFLOPS
• FP16 Performance: 15.62 TFLOPS (1:1) vs null
• TDP: 115 W vs 100 W
• Slot Width: IGP vs MXM Module
• Bus Interface: PCIe 4.0 x8 vs PCIe 3.0 x16
• DirectX Support: 12 Ultimate (12_2) vs 12 (11_1)
• Vulkan Support: 1.4 vs 1.2.170
• Production Status: Active vs End-of-life
• Release Date: 2023-01-02 vs 2014-01-08
• Predecessor: GeForce 30 Mobile vs Solar System
• Successor: GeForce 50 Mobile vs Polaris Mobile

The FP32 throughput difference is particularly stark: 15.62 TFLOPS for the NVIDIA card versus 2.304 TFLOPS for the AMD card, a 6.8x advantage.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile wins in nearly every measurable category in the database. Its single recorded head-to-head benchmark, Geekbench OpenCL, shows a 395.7% advantage over the R9 M290X. This makes it the clear choice for compute-intensive workloads such as GPU-accelerated rendering, machine learning inference, and scientific computing.

The RTX 4070 Mobile also wins on architectural features. Its ray tracing cores and tensor cores enable capabilities that the R9 M290X simply cannot offer. Games and applications that leverage DirectX 12 Ultimate features, such as ray-traced reflections and DLSS-style upscaling, will run on the NVIDIA card but have no equivalent path on the AMD GPU.

The memory capacity difference (8 GB vs 4 GB) means the RTX 4070 Mobile can handle larger textures and datasets without spilling to system memory. The higher bandwidth (256.0 GB/s vs 153.6 GB/s) further supports this advantage.

The AMD Radeon R9 M290X has no recorded wins in the head-to-head comparison. Its only advantage in the specification sheet is the wider 256-bit memory bus, but this does not translate into a practical performance benefit given the lower memory clock and older GDDR5 technology. The R9 M290X also has a lower TDP (100 W vs 115 W), which could be seen as a minor efficiency advantage, but the performance per watt is vastly inferior.

For users considering these GPUs today, the RTX 4070 Mobile is the only viable option for modern gaming and professional workloads. The R9 M290X, being end-of-life and based on 2014 technology, would struggle with contemporary titles and is limited to older API versions. The RTX 4070 Mobile's active production status and support for the latest DirectX 12 Ultimate and Vulkan 1.4 standards ensure forward compatibility.

In summary, the RTX 4070 Mobile is the dominant performer in every recorded benchmark, with a massive lead in compute throughput, a richer feature set, and a more modern architecture. The R9 M290X serves as a historical reference point, illustrating how far mobile GPU technology has advanced in the nine years between their respective releases.