Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 52992 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be quite a bit (approximately 100%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10688 (100%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10688 (100%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.