Radeon HD 7950 3GB vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific card. 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 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be 36% quicker than the Radeon R9 M295X overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X will be a bit (more or less 7%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (7%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (7%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number 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 higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.