Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 52992 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a lot (more or less 100%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10688 (100%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be quite a bit (more or less 100%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.