Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5830, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5830 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 75008 (142%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be much (approximately 319%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34112 (319%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 will be a bit (about 20%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.