Radeon HD 7950 3GB vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 295X2, which comes with GPU core speed of 1018 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 300 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 295X2 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 400000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is much (approximately 300%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 268736 (300%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 104704 (409%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.