Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which features GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (48%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should be 9% quicker than the Radeon R9 M295X overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X is just a bit (approximately 8%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be quite a bit (about 23%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 M295X, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (23%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.