Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which has a clock frequency of 780 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be 620% faster than the Radeon R5 M230 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (620%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be a lot (about 69%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10800 (69%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is superior to the Radeon R5 M230, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23280 (746%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed 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. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.