Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M255, which features GPU core speed of 940 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also features 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be 231% quicker than the Radeon R5 M255 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36992 (231%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be a lot (more or less 76%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8112 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be much (about 42%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R5 M255, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3168 (42%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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