Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R5 M330

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M330, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1030 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is 300% faster than the Radeon R5 M330 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M330		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M330 will be much (more or less 66%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M330		20600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8200 (66%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M330		8240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4160 (50%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.