Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features core clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R7 M260X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80128 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a lot (approximately 33%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be quite a bit (approximately 300%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M260X, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19800 (300%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.