Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which has clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M270X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 72128 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X is a small bit (about 10%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (10%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is much (approximately 128%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 M270X, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14800 (128%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 the graphics card could 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 the core 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.