Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 295X2, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1018 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 18335 (639%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 349 Watts (231%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 295X2 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 6870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 505600 (376%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is much (more or less 611%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 307936 (611%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 should be quite a bit (about 352%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 6870, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 101504 (352%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.