Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1018 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 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 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 12980 (158%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 250 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 295X2 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7970 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 376000 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is quite a bit (approximately 203%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 239936 (203%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be much (about 340%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.