Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 580, which features a core clock frequency of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 580 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 156160 (147%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be quite a bit (approximately 747%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 159632 (747%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is a lot (about 88%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18848 (88%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.