Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 42432 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be a small bit (approximately 17%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3624 (17%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be quite a bit (about 114%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 1GB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11376 (114%)

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 transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied per second. This 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.