Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 100608 (190%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is much (about 536%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 57312 (536%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot (about 154%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16512 (154%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.