GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which comes with a clock frequency of 723 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M395X should theoretically be a bit better than the GeForce GTX 470 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
	Difference: 26080 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be quite a bit (about 172%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58552 (172%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a small bit (about 5%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M395X, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1144 (5%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 a second.

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