Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M280X, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 35008 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be a lot (more or less 372%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39712 (372%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3712 (35%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.