Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features core clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 M260X should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (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 a lot (about 85%) more effective at texture 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

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be quite a bit (approximately 62%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M260X, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.