Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 74112 (140%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is quite a bit (about 368%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39312 (368%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be much (about 87%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9312 (87%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one 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. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.