Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R5 M230, which comes with a clock speed of 780 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon R5 M230		1281 points
	Difference: 6944 (542%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 is 1550% quicker than the Radeon R5 M230 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 248000 (1550%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (more or less 659%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 102800 (659%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (more or less 849%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R5 M230, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26480 (849%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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