Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M255, which features a core clock frequency of 940 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R5 M255 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 89984 (562%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a bit (approximately 14%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2576 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be quite a bit (more or less 184%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R5 M255, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13856 (184%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out 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 higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.