GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M295X should theoretically 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 will be a bit (about 10%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M295X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M295X is a better choice, but only just. (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 moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.