Radeon HD 4870 512MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M380, which comes with GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should in theory be a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M380 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 19200 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be a lot (more or less 33%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (33%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M380 is superior to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4000 (33%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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