Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5830, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 75008 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is a lot (more or less 319%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34112 (319%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a small bit (about 20%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2112 (20%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.