Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with GPU core speed of 1100 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M385X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 38400 (40%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is a lot (approximately 22%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (about 64%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M385X, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (64%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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 max fill rate.