Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 52992 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is quite a bit (about 100%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10688 (100%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.