Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 235008 (443%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (approximately 918%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 98112 (918%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (approximately 154%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16512 (154%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.