Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7850 should perform much faster than the Radeon R9 M385X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is a small bit (about 12%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (12%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9920 (56%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.