Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 825 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory be a little bit faster than the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X is much (approximately 60%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a lot (more or less 88%) better at AA than the Radeon R7 M260X, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5800 (88%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.