Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R7 360

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 360, which has core clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1625 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 768 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon R7 360		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 360 should be 96% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 51008 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 360 should be quite a bit (about 372%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39712 (372%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 360 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 360		16800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.