Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M295X, which features a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M295X should in theory be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X is just a bit (about 20%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (20%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the Radeon R9 M295X, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (33%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.