Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M295X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X is a bit (approximately 14%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11520 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a little bit (about 17%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M295X, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4160 (17%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.