Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which has GPU core speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M390X should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 107008 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be a lot (about 766%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81856 (766%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is much (more or less 116%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12448 (116%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be 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 this number, 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.