Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 M295X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M295X, which comes with a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M295X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
	Difference: 31872 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M295X should be a lot (about 264%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M295X		96000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69600 (264%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be a small bit (about 10%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M295X, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M295X		24000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.