Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features a core clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 380 2G should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 76416 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is much (approximately 408%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87264 (408%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9664 (45%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.