Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 250X, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 250X is 36% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 19008 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X should be a lot (more or less 274%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29312 (274%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5312 (50%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.