Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R7 250

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250, which comes with core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1150 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250		65 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 250 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		73600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 20608 (39%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250 will be much (about 125%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13312 (125%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be a lot (about 34%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 250, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.