Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 285, which features a core clock frequency of 918 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 285		8500 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 275 (3%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
Radeon R9 285		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (17%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon R9 285 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is a little bit (more or less 15%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15584 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 224 (1%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.