Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon R9 Nano

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 Nano, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The HBM memory is set to run at a frequency of 500 MHz on this card. It features 4096 SPUs along with 256 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 Nano is 383% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 Nano		512000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 406016 (383%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 Nano should be much (more or less 1098%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 Nano		256000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 234624 (1098%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 Nano should be much (approximately 199%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 Nano		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42624 (199%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.