Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M270X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X is a bit (more or less 10%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is much (about 128%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M270X, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (128%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.