Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X will be 113% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 81600 (113%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be much (more or less 448%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55600 (448%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (more or less 119%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (119%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.