Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M280X should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 35008 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be a lot (about 372%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39712 (372%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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