Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 is 142% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 75008 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is much (approximately 319%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34112 (319%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be just a bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2112 (20%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.