Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features a core clock frequency of 825 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R7 M260X should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X will be quite a bit (about 60%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (60%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5800 (88%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.