Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M380, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M380 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 is much (about 223%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27600 (223%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be much (about 29%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (29%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.