Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which features a clock frequency of 1018 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, 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 is 233% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 should be a lot (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 a better choice, by a large margin. (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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.