In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 3850 AGP are noticeably better than the Intel HD Graphics 510 Desktop.

The HD 3850 has a 318 MHz higher core clock speed and 8 more Texture Mapping Units than the Graphics 510. This results in the HD 3850 providing 7.9 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 3850 has a 318 MHz higher core clock speed and 12 more Render Output Units than the Graphics 510. This results in the HD 3850 providing 9.3 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The Graphics 510 was released over three years more recently than the HD 3850, and so the Graphics 510 is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the HD 3850 when running the latest games.

The HD 3850 has 512 MB video memory, but the Graphics 510 does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The HD Graphics 510 Desktop has 12 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 3850 AGP has 320. However, the actual shader performance of the Graphics 510 is 101 and the actual shader performance of the HD 3850 is 214. The HD 3850 having 113 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD 3850 delivers a noticeably smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the Graphics 510.

The Graphics 510 transistor size technology is 41 nm (nanometers) smaller than the HD 3850. This means that the Graphics 510 is expected to run much cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the HD 3850.

The HD Graphics 510 Desktop requires 47 Watts to run and the Radeon HD 3850 AGP requires 75 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the Graphics 510 and a PSU with at least 450 Watts for the HD 3850. The HD 3850 requires 28 Watts more than the Graphics 510 to run. The difference is not significant enough for the HD 3850 to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the Graphics 510.