GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which has clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M295X should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (83%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be just a bit (about 10%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 M295X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9392 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M295X is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1416 (6%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.