Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which has core clock speeds of 780 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R5 M230 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36992 (231%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 will be quite a bit (more or less 46%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4912 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is superior to the Radeon R5 M230, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7568 (243%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed 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 amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.