Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M265X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M265X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 575 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M265X should be a lot (approximately 85%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M265X		23000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10600 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be a lot (more or less 35%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R9 M265X, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.