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

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should be 140% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (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 is quite a bit (approximately 368%) faster with regards to AF 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 resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, 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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.