AMD Radeon R9 M295X vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is a decisive generational leap over the AMD Radeon R9 M295X, delivering benchmark scores that are roughly four to five times higher in shared tests. The data shows an absolute victory for the RTX 3070 Ti, with the R9 M295X trailing by margins exceeding 379% in every comparable workload, making this comparison less a contest and more a demonstration of how far GPU technology advanced between 2014 and 2021.

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti than the AMD Radeon R9 M295X in OpenCL?

A: The RTX 3070 Ti scores 119,718 in Geekbench OpenCL, while the R9 M295X scores 22,858. This represents a 423.7% advantage for the NVIDIA card, meaning it delivers over five times the compute performance in this test.

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has an average benchmark score of 29,945, compared to 28,580 for the AMD Radeon R9 M295X. Despite the massive gap in individual tests, the averages are relatively close because the AMD card only has three benchmarks recorded while the NVIDIA card has ten, skewing the aggregate.

Q: What is the process node difference between the two cards?

A: The RTX 3070 Ti is built on an 8 nm Samsung process, while the R9 M295X uses a 28 nm TSMC node. The newer 8 nm process allows the NVIDIA card to pack 17,400 million transistors into a 392 mm² die, versus 5,000 million transistors on a 366 mm² die for AMD.

Q: How does memory bandwidth compare?

A: The RTX 3070 Ti offers 608.3 GB/s of bandwidth using 8 GB of GDDR6X on a 256-bit bus. The R9 M295X provides 160.0 GB/s with 4 GB of GDDR5 on the same 256-bit bus width, giving NVIDIA a 3.8x bandwidth advantage.

Q: Does the R9 M295X support ray tracing?

A: No. The R9 M295X is based on GCN 3.0 architecture and has no RT cores listed. The RTX 3070 Ti, using Ampere architecture, includes 48 dedicated RT cores and 192 tensor cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and DLSS features.

Q: What is the percentile ranking difference?

A: The RTX 3070 Ti sits in the 75th percentile of all GPUs, while the R9 M295X is just behind at the 74th percentile. Both are near the upper-middle range, but the NVIDIA card edges out the AMD part in overall standing.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti wins every single head-to-head benchmark recorded in the data. In Geekbench Vulkan, it scores 139,541 against 29,091 for the R9 M295X, a 379.7% margin. In OpenCL, the gap widens further to 423.7%. There are no benchmark categories where the AMD card takes a win, making this a clean sweep for NVIDIA.

The R9 M295X’s only claim to relevance is its relative position in the aggregate. Its average benchmark score of 28,580 places it within 1.6% of the RTX 3070 Ti's 29,945, but this is misleading because the AMD card has only three available scores (Metal, OpenCL, Vulkan) while NVIDIA has ten. Looking at shared tests alone, the R9 M295X is utterly outclassed.

In terms of specific workloads, the RTX 3070 Ti dominates compute-heavy tasks like OpenCL, where its 21.75 TFLOPS FP32 performance dwarfs the R9 M295X's 2.961 TFLOPS. The NVIDIA card also wins in Vulkan, reflecting its modern architecture's better driver optimization and hardware feature set. The R9 M295X does have a Metal benchmark score of 33,790, but the RTX 3070 Ti has no Metal score recorded, so no direct comparison is possible there.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two GPUs spans two console generations. The RTX 3070 Ti uses NVIDIA's Ampere architecture on an 8 nm Samsung process, featuring 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die. This yields a transistor density of 44.4 million per mm². The R9 M295X, by contrast, uses AMD's GCN 3.0 architecture on a 28 nm TSMC process, with only 5,000 million transistors on a 366 mm² die — a density of 13.7 million per mm².

Shading hardware tells the story of compute capability. The RTX 3070 Ti has 6,144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 96 ROPs. The R9 M295X has 2,048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and just 32 ROPs. This 3x advantage in shaders and 3x in ROPs translates directly to the NVIDIA card's 169.9 GPixel/s pixel rate and 339.8 GTexel/s texture rate, versus the AMD card's 23.14 GPixel/s and 92.54 GTexel/s.

Feature support is another chasm. The RTX 3070 Ti includes 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores, enabling real-time ray tracing and AI-accelerated features. The R9 M295X has neither, as it predates those technologies. API support also differs: NVIDIA supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, while AMD only reaches DirectX 12 (12_0) and Vulkan 1.2.170. Both support OpenGL 4.6.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ in nearly every measurable specification. Memory configuration is a clear split: the RTX 3070 Ti has 8 GB of GDDR6X running at 19 Gbps effective, delivering 608.3 GB/s bandwidth. The R9 M295X has 4 GB of GDDR5 at 5 Gbps effective, yielding 160.0 GB/s. Both use a 256-bit bus, but the memory technology gap is enormous.

Compute output shows a 7.3x difference in FP32 performance: 21.75 TFLOPS for NVIDIA versus 2.961 TFLOPS for AMD. FP16 performance is identical to FP32 on both cards (1:1 ratio), but the absolute numbers remain the same gap. Power consumption is closer than performance: the RTX 3070 Ti has a 290 W TDP with a 600 W suggested PSU, while the R9 M295X draws 250 W with no PSU recommendation listed.

Physical form factors diverge completely. The RTX 3070 Ti is a dual-slot PCIe 4.0 x16 card measuring 267 mm in length and 112 mm in height, with a 1x 12-pin power connector and display outputs of 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a. The R9 M295X is an MXM Module using an MXM-B (3.0) interface, has no power connectors, and its display outputs are listed as "Portable Device Dependent" — it was designed for laptops, not desktops.

Release timing also separates them: the RTX 3070 Ti launched on May 30, 2021, while the R9 M295X launched on November 22, 2014. The NVIDIA card has a launch MSRP of 599 USD, while the AMD card has no listed MSRP. Both are end-of-life products.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two shared benchmarks show a total rout. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 3070 Ti scores 119,718 against 22,858 for the R9 M295X. The delta is 423.7%, meaning NVIDIA is more than five times faster. This test is particularly telling because OpenCL is a cross-vendor compute standard, so both cards are running the same workload with no platform bias.

Geekbench Vulkan shows a similar pattern: 139,541 for the RTX 3070 Ti versus 29,091 for the R9 M295X, a 379.7% delta. Vulkan is a modern low-level API, and the NVIDIA card's advantage here reflects both its newer architecture and better driver maturity for contemporary graphics workloads. The R9 M295X's Vulkan score is actually its best relative showing, but it still falls short by nearly four times.

Beyond these shared tests, the RTX 3070 Ti has additional benchmarks the R9 M295X does not: 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 (3,478), Passmark G3D (23,356), Passmark GPU Compute (11,601), and a range of DirectX 9/10/11/12 Passmark scores. The R9 M295X has a Geekbench Metal score of 33,790, but no NVIDIA equivalent exists. In the wins tally, the RTX 3070 Ti takes 2 wins and the R9 M295X takes 0.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the superior GPU in every measurable way. Its 423.7% OpenCL lead and 379.7% Vulkan lead are not marginal improvements but generational obliteration. Anyone comparing these two for modern workloads should choose the RTX 3070 Ti without hesitation — it offers 8 GB of GDDR6X memory versus 4 GB of GDDR5, 21.75 TFLOPS versus 2.961 TFLOPS, and support for ray tracing and tensor cores that the R9 M295X simply lacks.

The R9 M295X does have one niche: it is an MXM module, meaning it was built for portable devices where the RTX 3070 Ti's dual-slot PCIe form factor cannot fit. For legacy laptop upgrades where MXM compatibility is mandatory, the R9 M295X remains the only choice. But in any scenario where a desktop GPU can be installed, the RTX 3070 Ti wins outright.

The percentile rankings reinforce this: both cards sit near each other at 75th and 74th percentiles respectively, but this is an artifact of the R9 M295X having fewer recorded benchmarks. In direct competition, the RTX 3070 Ti is not merely better — it is in a different performance class entirely. The verdict is simple: pick the RTX 3070 Ti for its massive compute advantage, modern feature set, and superior memory subsystem, unless the MXM form factor of the R9 M295X is a hard requirement.