Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 vs Radeon RX 540

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 and Radeon RX 540, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 stacks up against Radeon RX 540, check out specs charts below.

Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 and Radeon RX 540 are Laptop Graphics Cards

Note: Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 and Radeon RX 540 are only used in laptop graphics. They have lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 or Radeon RX 540 here:

Main Specs

  Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 Radeon RX 540
Power consumption (TDP) 110 Watt 65 Watt
Interface PCIe 2.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 1x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR3 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 512 MB 4 GB
Display Connectors No outputs
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  • Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 has 69% more power consumption, than Radeon RX 540.
  • Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 is connected by PCIe 2.0 x16, and Radeon RX 540 uses PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
  • Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 has 508 GB more memory, than Radeon RX 540.
  • Both cards are used in Laptops.
  • Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 is build with RV6xx architecture, and Radeon RX 540 - with Polaris.
  • Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 is manufactured by 55 nm process technology, and Radeon RX 540 - by 14 nm process technology.
  • Memory clock speed of Radeon RX 540 is 5150 MHz higher, than Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 6−7 14−16
ultra / 1080p 4−5 8−9
QHD / 1440p 0−1 3−4
low / 720p 16−18 30−33
medium / 1080p 8−9 18−20
The average gaming FPS of Radeon RX 540 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 100% more, than Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2.

Full Specs

  Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2 Radeon RX 540
Architecture RV6xx Polaris
Code name M88-XT CF Polaris 12
Type Laptop Laptop
Release date 1 September 2008 21 March 2017
Pipelines 640 512
Core clock speed 660 MHz
Boost Clock 1219 MHz
Transistor count 666 million 1,500 million
Manufacturing process technology 55 nm 14 nm
Texture fill rate 10.56 39.01
Floating-point performance 2x 422.4 gflops 1,248 gflops
Memory bus width 256 Bit 128 Bit
Memory clock speed 850 MHz 6000 MHz
Memory bandwidth 54.4 GB/s 96 GB/s
Shared memory - -
DirectX 10.1 (10_1) 12.0
Shader Model 4.1 5.0
OpenGL 3.3 4.6
OpenCL N/A 1.2
Vulkan N/A
FreeSync +
Laptop size large large
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