Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which features GPU clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M385X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (81%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be quite a bit (about 476%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50912 (476%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure 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 in a second.

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