Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M380, which features a core clock speed 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 features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M380 is 216% faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 65600 (216%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be much (approximately 1150%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (1150%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 is much (more or less 400%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must 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 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 in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.