Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M395X, which features core clock speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (48%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M395X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be just a bit (about 4%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3744 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (28%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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 potential to get to the max fill rate.