Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7790, which comes with core speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7790 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 is much (more or less 162%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34624 (162%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a lot (more or less 34%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7790, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5376 (34%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 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 figure is calculated by multiplying the total 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.