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Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB comes with a clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB 75 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X 100 Watts
Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X 153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB 52992 MB/sec
Difference: 100608 (190%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (about 536%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X 68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB 10688 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 57312 (536%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X 27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB 10688 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 16512 (154%)

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

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Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 M290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3850 1GB Radeon R9 M290X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 19, 2007 May 1 2014
Code Name RV670 PRO Neptune XT
Memory 1024 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 668 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 1656 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 75 watts 100 watts
Bandwidth 52992 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 10688 Mtexels/sec 68000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 10688 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) 1280
Texture Mapping Units 16 80
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 could possibly write to its 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 sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 M290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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