Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (267%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 331008 (625%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be a lot (more or less 1629%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 174112 (1629%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be quite a bit (about 529%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56512 (529%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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