Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M395X, which has a core clock speed of 723 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (135%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 M395X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be quite a bit (approximately 151%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M395X. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 139456 (151%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (more or less 301%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M395X, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 69664 (301%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.