Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 250, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1150 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 384 Stream Processors, 24 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R7 250 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 20608 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 should be much (more or less 125%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13312 (125%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB will be a lot (about 34%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R7 250, and also able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250		8000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2688 (34%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.