Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 memory works at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 10560 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be a lot (about 134%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14312 (134%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 688 (7%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 output rate also depends 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.