Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R7 M265

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M265, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon R7 M265 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M265		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M265 will be much (more or less 40%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 M265		17400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5000 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be much (more or less 114%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M265, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M265		5800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6600 (114%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.