Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which comes with core clock speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 480 4GB is 116% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 123392 (116%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB will be quite a bit (more or less 654%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 139904 (654%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB will be much (more or less 68%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14464 (68%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.