Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which comes with core speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon R9 M395X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be a bit (more or less 10%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8064 (10%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5024 (22%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.