Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which features core speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 42432 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be a bit (more or less 17%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3624 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be much (more or less 114%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11376 (114%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.