Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 10560 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB is a lot (approximately 134%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14312 (134%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is a better choice, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 688 (7%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its 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 core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.