Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M380, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon R9 M380 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be quite a bit (approximately 87%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18624 (87%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be much (more or less 34%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M380, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5376 (34%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. 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 faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.