Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M395X, which has clock speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 63 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M395X should theoretically be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 5870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X is much (approximately 36%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24544 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a bit (more or less 18%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M395X, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4064 (18%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 applied per second. This number 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number 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 worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.