Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M295X, which has core clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M295X should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 31872 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X will be quite a bit (more or less 264%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69600 (264%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a small bit (more or less 10%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M295X, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed 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 higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.