Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which comes with core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M295X should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (31%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X is quite a bit (more or less 90%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45600 (90%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a little bit (more or less 20%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 M295X, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (20%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.