Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M270X, which comes with GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be 47% faster than the Radeon R9 M270X overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 33984 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be quite a bit (more or less 36%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7624 (36%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9776 (84%)

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

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.