Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which features a clock frequency of 1018 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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 HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 14815 (232%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 315 Watts (170%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 295X2 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 448000 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is quite a bit (about 304%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 269536 (304%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be a lot (approximately 340%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 100704 (340%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per 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 this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 reach the max fill rate.