Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 295X2, which has a core clock frequency of 1018 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 206 Watts (70%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 295X2 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 5970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
	Difference: 384000 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is much (approximately 54%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5970. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 126336 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 should be a lot (more or less 40%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5970, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37504 (40%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.