Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M265X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M265X, which has core speeds of 575 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M265X should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M265X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M265X is quite a bit (about 85%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M265X		23000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10600 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB should be quite a bit (more or less 35%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M265X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M265X		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (35%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.