Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1425 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 380X should be 72% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 76416 (72%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X will be much (about 481%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 102784 (481%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X should be much (more or less 45%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9664 (45%)

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

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