Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1125 MHz on this particular model. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon R7 250X		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 250X should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 19008 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X will be quite a bit (about 274%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29312 (274%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X is quite a bit (more or less 50%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5312 (50%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.