Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 260X, which comes with clock speeds of 1100 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 260X should be 96% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 51008 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X is a lot (approximately 476%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50912 (476%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.