Radeon HD 6970 vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X will be a small bit (about 14%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6970. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11520 (14%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6970 is superior to the Radeon R9 M295X, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4160 (17%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.