Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 828 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 52992 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is much (more or less 100%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10688 (100%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10688 (100%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.