Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 134016 (126%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is much (about 389%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83120 (389%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (about 40%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8480 (40%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per 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 higher this number, the better the card will be at 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 record to its 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 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.