Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be 50% faster than the Radeon R9 M385X overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48128 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be much (approximately 133%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (133%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be much (approximately 50%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M385X, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (50%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.