Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260X, which has core clock speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 M260X should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 M260X should be quite a bit (about 85%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9112 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB will be a lot (approximately 62%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M260X, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4088 (62%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 processed 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 the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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