Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which features clock speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (153%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 380 4G should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 129408 (244%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is a lot (approximately 916%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 97952 (916%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G should be much (more or less 190%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20352 (190%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.