Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R7 360

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 360, which features core speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 768 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon R7 360		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 360 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 51008 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 will be quite a bit (approximately 372%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39712 (372%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 will be quite a bit (more or less 57%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		16800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6112 (57%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.