Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R7 M260X should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X should be much (more or less 85%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9112 (85%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is superior to the Radeon R7 M260X, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.