Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 295X2, which features core speeds of 1018 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 295X2		21205 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 14815 (232%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 315 Watts (170%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 295X2 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 448000 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is much (approximately 304%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 269536 (304%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is superior to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 100704 (340%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.