Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M385X, which has a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M385X should be 216% faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 65600 (216%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be quite a bit (more or less 1825%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58400 (1825%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be much (about 450%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (450%)

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 moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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