Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 4750

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4750, which comes with clock speeds of 730 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4750 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4750		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 1792 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4750 is a lot (about 119%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4750		23360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12672 (119%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4750 is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 4750		11680 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 992 (9%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.