Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition vs Radeon R9 255 OEM

Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
Memory: 3072Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 22 Jun 2012
Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
Radeon R9 255 OEM
Memory: 2048Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 21 Dec 2013
Radeon R9 255 OEM

Summary

Reasons to consider Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition

Higher theoretical gaming performance, based on specifications.
Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
Supports Mantle
Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Reasons to consider Radeon R9 255 OEM

235 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition .
This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support.
Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
Supports Mantle
Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition

HWBench recommends Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition

Based on theoretical specifications.


Specifications

Core Configuration

Radeon HD 7970 GHz EditionRadeon R9 255 OEM
GPU NameTahiti (Tahiti XT2)vsCape Verde (Cape Verde PRX)
Fab Process28 nmvs28 nm
Die Size352 mm²vs123 mm²
Transistors4,313 millionvs1,500 million
Shaders2048vs512
Compute Units32vs8
Core clock1000 MHzvs900 MHz
ROPs32vs16
TMUs128vs32

Memory Configuration

Radeon HD 7970 GHz EditionRadeon R9 255 OEM
Memory TypeGDDR5vsGDDR5
Bus Width384 bitvs128 bit
Memory Speed1500 MHz
6000 MHz effective
vs1150 MHz
4600 MHz effective
Memory Size3072 Mbvs2048 Mb

Additional details

Radeon HD 7970 GHz EditionRadeon R9 255 OEM
TDP300 wattsvs65 watts
Release Date22 Jun 2012vs21 Dec 2013

Raw Performance comparison

Pixel Rate

  • Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
    32.00 GP/s
  • Radeon R9 255 OEM
    14.40 GP/s

GigaPixels - higher is better

Texel Rate

  • Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
    128.00 GT/s
  • Radeon R9 255 OEM
    28.80 GT/s

GigaTexels - higher is better

Memory bandwidth

  • Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
    288.00 GB/s
  • Radeon R9 255 OEM
    73.60 GB/s

GB/s - higher is better

Single precision performance

  • Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
    4096.00 GFLOPs
  • Radeon R9 255 OEM
    921.60 GFLOPs

GFLOPs - higher is better