Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1018 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 295X2		21205 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 12319 (139%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 250 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 295X2 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R9 280X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 352000 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be a lot (more or less 229%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 249536 (229%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 103104 (379%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.