Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which features GPU core speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M390X should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (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 using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M390X is the winner, 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.