Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M380, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M380 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be quite a bit (about 274%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29312 (274%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 is a lot (more or less 50%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5312 (50%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.