Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M280X, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (189%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is much (about 1475%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (1475%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be much (approximately 350%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.