Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which has clock speeds of 725 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

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is 47% faster than the Radeon R9 M270X in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 33984 (47%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X is much (approximately 36%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7624 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be quite a bit (more or less 84%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 M270X, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9776 (84%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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