Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M280X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (200%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a lot (about 135%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68000 (135%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a lot (about 106%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M280X, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (106%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.