Radeon HD 4870 1GB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB, in theory, should be a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M385X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X will be quite a bit (more or less 105%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31600 (105%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is much (more or less 47%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (47%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.