Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260, which comes with GPU clock speed of 715 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 384 Stream Processors, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon R7 M260 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36992 (231%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260 is much (more or less 61%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6472 (61%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is superior to the Radeon R7 M260, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4968 (87%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.