Radeon HD 5850 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which has a clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 39 Watts (26%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 380 4G should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5850 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G will be a lot (approximately 108%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5850. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56440 (108%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G should be much (approximately 34%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5850, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7840 (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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.