Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 780 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be 231% quicker than the Radeon R5 M230 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36992 (231%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be quite a bit (more or less 46%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4912 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB is quite a bit (about 243%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R5 M230, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7568 (243%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 potential to reach the max fill rate.