Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X is 443% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 235008 (443%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (about 918%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 98112 (918%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (more or less 154%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.