Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M395X should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X is quite a bit (more or less 646%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80144 (646%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be quite a bit (about 87%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10736 (87%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.