Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M295X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (48%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory be a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 M295X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X is just a bit (more or less 8%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (8%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a lot (approximately 23%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M295X, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (23%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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.