Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M380, which comes with a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 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

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M380 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be a lot (more or less 33%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be a lot (about 33%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (33%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.