Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M280X is 66% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 35008 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be much (about 372%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39712 (372%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.