Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M295X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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 theoretically perform just a 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 will be a small bit (approximately 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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.