Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M275X, which comes with a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M275X		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M275X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 19008 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M275X is quite a bit (approximately 237%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25312 (237%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M275X is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M275X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3712 (35%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.