Radeon HD 7950 3GB vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 285, which comes with core clock speeds of 918 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (5%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 285 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 should be a little bit (about 15%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13216 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 285 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3776 (15%)

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

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