Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M295X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 26 Watts (21%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M295X, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 6870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (31%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X will be a lot (more or less 90%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 45600 (90%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a small bit (about 20%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M295X, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (20%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.