Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M295X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform much faster than the Radeon R9 M295X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be quite a bit (more or less 23%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M295X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (23%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (approximately 23%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M295X, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.