Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which features core speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 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)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 63 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M395X should be 4% faster than the Radeon HD 5870 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be quite a bit (more or less 36%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24544 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4064 (18%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.