Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 M375

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M375, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1015 MHz. The DDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 1100 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should in theory be much superior to the Radeon R9 M375 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M375		35200 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (227%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M375 is a lot (about 54%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		40600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14200 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be a lot (more or less 63%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 M375, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M375		16240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10160 (63%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.