AMD Radeon R7 M370 vs AMD Radeon R9 M360 Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark data delivers a clear, decisive result: the AMD Radeon R9 M360 outperforms the AMD Radeon R7 M370 in both recorded tests, and the margin is substantial. In Geekbench OpenCL, the R9 M360 scores 8211 against 7063 for the R7 M370, a 16.3% advantage. The Vulkan test widens the gap even further, with the R9 M360 posting 8047 to the R7 M370's 6465, a 24.5% lead. Across both workloads, the R9 M360 claims two wins out of two head-to-head comparisons.

The OpenCL result is a meaningful victory but not a rout. A 16.3% gap in compute throughput typically translates to visibly faster rendering and compute tasks, yet it leaves room for the R7 M370 to remain functional in lighter workloads. The Vulkan delta, however, tells a different story. A 24.5% advantage in a modern, low-level graphics API suggests that the R9 M360 has a clear architectural edge in driver-efficient, draw-call-heavy scenarios. This is not a marginal difference; it is a tier-level separation.

Context from the nearest rivals reinforces this verdict. The R9 M360's average benchmark score across all recorded tests is 8129, placing it at the 42nd percentile among all GPUs in the database. Its closest competitor, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M sits at 8135, a mere 0.1% above, meaning the R9 M360 is effectively neck-and-neck with that GPU. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 leads by only 0.5%, while the NVIDIA GeForce 945M trails by 0.4% and the NVIDIA GRID K2 by 0.6%. By contrast, the R7 M370's average score of 6764 lands at the 38th percentile. Its nearest rival, the AMD FirePro M5100, scores 6830, which is 1% higher. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M sits 2.6% above, while the NVIDIA GeForce GT 1010 trails by 1% and the AMD Radeon R7 M460 trails by 2.3%. The R9 M360 sits in a different competitive bracket entirely, trading blows with mid-range NVIDIA parts, while the R7 M370 competes in a lower tier.

The Vulkan result deserves particular attention. The R9 M360's 8047 score in Vulkan is only 164 points below its OpenCL score, showing consistent performance across API generations. The R7 M370, meanwhile, drops from 7063 in OpenCL to 6465 in Vulkan, a 598-point decline. This asymmetry indicates that the R9 M360's larger compute resource allocation scales better with modern API overhead, whereas the R7 M370 loses more performance when moving to Vulkan's explicit execution model.

Architecture Differences

Both GPUs share the same GCN 1.0 architecture and are fabricated on a 28 nm process at TSMC, but the silicon underneath is quite different. The R9 M360 uses the Tropo chip, which packs 1,500 million transistors into a 123 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 12.2 million per mm². The R7 M370 uses the smaller Litho chip, with 950 million transistors on a 77 mm² die at 12.3 million per mm². The R9 M360 thus carries 58% more transistors on a 60% larger die, and the near-identical density figures confirm that both chips are scaled versions of the same fundamental design.

The compute resources diverge sharply. The R9 M360 fields 512 shading units, 32 texture mapping units, and 16 ROPs. The R7 M370 halves the ROP count to 8, reduces texture units to 24, and cuts shading units down to 384. This is a 33% reduction in shader count and a 25% reduction in TMUs, but a 50% cut in ROPs. The ROP deficit directly explains the pixel throughput gap: the R9 M360 delivers 14.80 GPixel/s while the R7 M370 manages just 7.680 GPixel/s. That is a 92% advantage for the R9 M360 in rasterization throughput, a critical metric for fill-rate-bound scenes.

Texture rate follows a similar pattern. The R9 M360 produces 29.60 GTexel/s versus 23.04 GTexel/s for the R7 M370, a 28% lead. Floating-point performance, measured as FP32, shows the R9 M360 at 947.2 GFLOPS against 737.3 GFLOPS for the R7 M370, a 28.5% advantage. These arithmetic results align closely with the core-count ratios, confirming that clock speeds do not compensate for the R7 M370's smaller configuration.

Clock behavior adds nuance. The R9 M360 runs a base clock of 900 MHz and boosts to 925 MHz. The R7 M370 starts lower at 875 MHz base but boosts higher to 960 MHz. The R7 M370's 35 MHz boost advantage is real but insufficient to close the core-count gap. Memory clocks also differ: the R9 M360 runs its GDDR5 at 1125 MHz, or 4.5 Gbps effective, while the R7 M370 runs at 900 MHz, or 3.6 Gbps effective. Both use a 128-bit bus, but the R9 M360 achieves 72.00 GB/s of bandwidth versus 57.60 GB/s for the R7 M370, a 25% lead that compounds its compute advantage.

Memory capacity is another differentiator. The R9 M360 ships with 4 GB of GDDR5, double the R7 M370's 2 GB. For workloads that exceed 2 GB of frame buffer usage, the R7 M370 will either spill to system memory or fail outright, while the R9 M360 has headroom. The bus interface also differs: the R9 M360 uses PCIe 3.0 x16, while the R7 M370 is limited to PCIe 3.0 x8. For a mobile GPU, this rarely bottlenecks either part, but the wider interface is a spec-sheet advantage for the R9 M360.

Both parts share identical API support: DirectX 12 (11_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.170. Neither has ray tracing cores or tensor cores, and both are end-of-life products released on the same date, 2015-05-04. Both belong to the Gem System generation, with the R9 M360 in the R9 M300 series and the R7 M370 in the R7 M300 series. Their predecessor is the Solar System generation and successor is Polaris Mobile for both.

Where Each One Wins

The R9 M360 wins every recorded benchmark, so the use-case split is not about whether one beats the other, but by how much and in which scenarios. The Vulkan test shows the largest margin at 24.5%, indicating that the R9 M360 is particularly well-suited to modern APIs that expose hardware details directly to developers. Games and applications built on Vulkan will see the biggest relative benefit from choosing the R9 M360 over the R7 M370.

The OpenCL test, with a 16.3% lead, still favors the R9 M360 but suggests that compute-heavy workloads such as physics simulation, image processing, or general-purpose GPU acceleration are less lopsided. The R7 M370's 384 shading units can still execute OpenCL kernels competently, but the R9 M360's 512 units and 25% higher memory bandwidth give it a decisive edge in memory-bound compute tasks.

The R7 M370's only statistical advantages are clock-related. Its boost clock of 960 MHz exceeds the R9 M360's 925 MHz, and its transistor density of 12.3 million per mm² is marginally higher than the R9 M360's 12.2 million per mm². In practice, these differences are negligible for real-world performance. A higher boost clock cannot offset a one-third reduction in shading units and a halving of ROPs. The R7 M370 also consumes less silicon, with a 77 mm² die versus 123 mm², which historically correlates with lower power draw, but the database records no TDP figures for either part, so any power conclusion would be speculative.

For gaming at 1080p with moderate settings, the R9 M360's 4 GB frame buffer and 16 ROPs make it the clear choice, especially for texture-heavy titles that approach the 2 GB limit where the R7 M370 would struggle. For lightweight 2D workloads, legacy titles, or compute tasks that are not fill-rate-bound, the R7 M370 remains functional, but the data gives no scenario where it wins a benchmark outright.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The AMD Radeon R9 M360 scores 8211 versus 7063 for the R7 M370, a 16.3% advantage.

Q: How large is the Vulkan performance gap?

A: The R9 M360 scores 8047 against 6465 for the R7 M370, a 24.5% lead. This is the largest margin between the two in any recorded test.

Q: Do both GPUs support the same APIs?

A: Yes, both support DirectX 12 (11_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.2.170.

Q: What is the memory capacity difference?

A: The R9 M360 has 4 GB of GDDR5, while the R7 M370 has 2 GB. Both use a 128-bit bus, but the R9 M360 reaches 72.00 GB/s bandwidth versus 57.60 GB/s.

Q: Are they on the same manufacturing process?

A: Yes, both are built on a 28 nm process at TSMC. The R9 M360 uses the Tropo chip with 1,500 million transistors, while the R7 M370 uses the Litho chip with 950 million.

Q: How do their pixel rates compare?

A: The R9 M360 delivers 14.80 GPixel/s, while the R7 M370 manages 7.680 GPixel/s. The R9 M360 has double the ROP count at 16 versus 8.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous: the AMD Radeon R9 M360 is the superior GPU for every measured workload. It wins both benchmarks, holds a higher percentile ranking at 42 versus 38, and carries a 20.2% higher average benchmark score of 8129 versus 6764. For any buyer choosing between these two, the R9 M360 is the only rational pick based on performance.

The competitive context makes the decision even clearer. The R9 M360 trades blows with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M, sitting just 0.1% below that GPU's average score of 8135. It even sits within 0.5% of the desktop-class NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980. The R7 M370, by contrast, sits below the AMD FirePro M5100 by 1% and above the NVIDIA GeForce GT 1010 by only 1%. The R7 M370's ceiling is the R9 M360's floor.

The 4 GB memory capacity of the R9 M360 is a practical advantage for modern textures and larger datasets. The R7 M370's 2 GB allocation is a hard constraint in any workload that approaches that limit. Combined with the R9 M360's wider PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, higher memory clock, and double ROP count, the R9 M360 is the better engineered product at every layer except raw boost clock, where the R7 M370's 960 MHz edges past 925 MHz by a margin that cannot compensate for its other deficits.

There is no workload category in the recorded data where the R7 M370 wins. The R9 M360 should be the default choice. The only reason to select the R7 M370 would be if the smaller die, 77 mm² versus 123 mm², translated to a form-factor or power requirement that the R9 M360 cannot meet, but the database records no TDP or dimensions for either part to confirm such a scenario. Based purely on benchmark results and architectural specifications, the R9 M360 is the decisive winner.

Specification Differences

| Specification | AMD Radeon R9 M360 | AMD Radeon R7 M370 |

|---|---|---|

| Chip | Tropo | Litho |

| Transistors | 1,500 million | 950 million |

| Die Size | 123 mm² | 77 mm² |

| Transistor Density | 12.2M / mm² | 12.3M / mm² |

| Base Clock | 900 MHz | 875 MHz |

| Boost Clock | 925 MHz | 960 MHz |

| Memory Clock | 1125 MHz (4.5 Gbps effective) | 900 MHz (3.6 Gbps effective) |

| Memory Size | 4 GB | 2 GB |

| Memory Bandwidth | 72.00 GB/s | 57.60 GB/s |

| Shading Units | 512 | 384 |

| TMUs | 32 | 24 |

| ROPs | 16 | 8 |

| Pixel Rate | 14.80 GPixel/s | 7.680 GPixel/s |

| Texture Rate | 29.60 GTexel/s | 23.04 GTexel/s |

| FP32 | 947.2 GFLOPS | 737.3 GFLOPS |

| Bus Interface | PCIe 3.0 x16 | PCIe 3.0 x8 |

| Generation | Gem System (R9 M300) | Gem System (R7 M300) |

| Geekbench OpenCL | 8211 | 7063 |

| Geekbench Vulkan | 8047 | 6465 |

| Average Benchmark Score | 8129 | 6764 |

| Percentile vs All GPUs | 42 | 38 |