Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R5 M230, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 780 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 1GB will be 231% faster than the Radeon R5 M230 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36992 (231%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be much (approximately 46%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4912 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is superior to the Radeon R5 M230, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.