Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260, which has a GPU core clock speed of 715 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should in theory be much better than the Radeon R7 M260 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (620%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be a lot (about 54%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9240 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20680 (362%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.