Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features a clock frequency of 825 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 384 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 M260X should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X is much (approximately 85%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9112 (85%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4088 (62%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.