Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a core clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 is 353% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 187008 (353%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (approximately 878%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 93808 (878%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19168 (179%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.