Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 580, which has GPU clock speed of 1257 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 580 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 156160 (147%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is much (more or less 747%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 159632 (747%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be quite a bit (more or less 88%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18848 (88%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.