Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M395X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M395X should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 107008 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be a lot (approximately 766%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81856 (766%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M395X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.