Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 295X2, which comes with core speeds of 1018 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 14975 (240%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 325 Watts (186%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 295X2 will be 317% quicker than the Radeon HD 7870 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 486400 (317%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 should be much (more or less 348%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 278336 (348%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is much (about 307%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 98304 (307%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.