Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M395X, which has clock speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M395X should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 107008 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X is a lot (about 766%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81856 (766%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be a lot (more or less 116%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated 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 it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.