Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6970 should be 100% quicker than the Radeon R9 M280X in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (about 68%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34080 (68%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (about 96%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 M280X, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13760 (96%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes 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 clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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