Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 M370X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M370X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon R9 M370X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M370X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M370X will be a lot (about 21%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		32000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M370X		12800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (106%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen 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 by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few 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.