Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M395X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 723 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M395X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 107008 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X should be much (more or less 766%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81856 (766%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M395X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.