Radeon HD 3470 256MB 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 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M380 should be 216% faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 65600 (216%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be much (approximately 1150%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (1150%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M380 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (400%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.