Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M290X should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 100608 (190%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (about 536%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57312 (536%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be much (about 154%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.