Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 200% faster than the Radeon R9 M280X overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (about 135%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68000 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (approximately 106%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R9 M280X, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (106%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.