Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should be 175% faster than the Radeon R9 M385X in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 168000 (175%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (more or less 92%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 M385X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56800 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (more or less 68%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M385X, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12000 (68%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.