Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M380, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M380 will be 81% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 is a lot (more or less 274%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29312 (274%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M380 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5312 (50%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.