Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon RX 460

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 460, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1090 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 460 should in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		112000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 6016 (6%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 460 should be quite a bit (more or less 186%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 460		61040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39664 (186%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be quite a bit (about 23%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 460, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 460		17440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3936 (23%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.