Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M370X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M370X, which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M370X should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M370X should be much (approximately 158%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		32000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (158%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M370X should be a small bit (about 3%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M370X		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (3%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 max fill rate.