Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon RX 550

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 550, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific model. It features 512 SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 550 should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		114688 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
	Difference: 8704 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 550 will be a lot (more or less 65%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon RX 550		35200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13824 (65%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be quite a bit (more or less 21%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon RX 550, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 550		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3776 (21%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.