Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M380, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should theoretically be a little bit better than the Radeon R9 M380 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 is a lot (more or less 33%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M380 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (33%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.