Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which features core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1400 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 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 R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (140%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 126208 (238%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be much (more or less 649%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69312 (649%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be much (more or less 199%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21312 (199%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.