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

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has core clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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 theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be a lot (approximately 368%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.