Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M275X, which comes with a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M275X should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (137%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X should be much (more or less 1025%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32800 (1025%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X should be quite a bit (more or less 350%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (350%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.