Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which features core speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M390X is 202% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 107008 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be quite a bit (more or less 766%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81856 (766%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M390X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12448 (116%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.