Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M295X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M295X should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (53%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X is a lot (approximately 264%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69600 (264%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.