Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R7 360

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 360, which features a clock frequency of 1050 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1625 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 768 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 360		100 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 360 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 46400 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 should be a lot (approximately 306%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38000 (306%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 360 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		16800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (35%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.