Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 270X, which has a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1400 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (140%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 126208 (238%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be quite a bit (more or less 649%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69312 (649%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (about 199%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21312 (199%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.