Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M375

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M375, which features GPU core speed of 1015 MHz, and 4096 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1100 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 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

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M375 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M375		35200 MB/sec
	Difference: 22400 (64%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M375 is a lot (approximately 227%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		40600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28200 (227%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M375 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		16240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (31%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.