Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which features a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M270X should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X should be much (about 134%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16600 (134%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB is a bit (about 7%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M270X, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 per second.

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