Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7850 should theoretically be much better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 100608 (190%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is quite a bit (about 415%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44352 (415%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is quite a bit (approximately 157%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16832 (157%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.