Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M380, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is 20% faster than the Radeon R9 M380 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be quite a bit (about 52%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13600 (52%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA 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 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10400 (65%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.