Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with a core clock speed of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 4790 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3584 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a little bit (about 11%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 4790. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2176 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is quite a bit (more or less 123%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4790, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11776 (123%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.