Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which has GPU clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 100608 (190%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be quite a bit (more or less 415%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44352 (415%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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