Radeon HD 4870 2GB vs Radeon R7 M360

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M360, which comes with a core clock speed of 1125 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB will be 620% quicker than the Radeon R7 M360 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M360		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (620%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB is just a bit (about 11%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M360. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M360		27000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3000 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 2GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M360		9000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3000 (33%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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