Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		127104 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 74112 (140%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be a lot (about 368%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		50000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39312 (368%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB will be a lot (approximately 87%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB		20000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9312 (87%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.