Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M375

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M375, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1015 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1100 MHz on this specific card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be 105% quicker than the Radeon R9 M375 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M375		35200 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (105%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M375 is much (approximately 227%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		40600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28200 (227%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M375 is quite a bit (about 31%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M375		16240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (31%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.