Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 825 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon R7 M260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be a lot (about 33%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is superior to the Radeon R7 M260X, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (300%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.