Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M280X should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 30400 (53%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be much (about 306%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38000 (306%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be a little bit (more or less 16%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2000 (16%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.