Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 260X, which has a core clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1625 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 260X should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 51008 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be quite a bit (more or less 476%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50912 (476%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X should be quite a bit (approximately 65%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.