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Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with a core clock frequency of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2 105984 MB/sec
Difference: 28416 (27%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be a lot (approximately 57%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790 33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2 21376 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 12224 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2 21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790 13440 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 7936 (59%)

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

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Radeon HD 3850 X2

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6790

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3850 X2 Radeon HD 6790
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Apr 4, 2008 April 2011
Code Name RV670 PRO Barts LE
Memory 512 MB (x2) 1024 MB
Core Speed 668 MHz (x2) 840 MHz
Memory Speed 1656 MHz (x2) 4200 MHz
Power (Max TDP) (Unknown) watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 105984 MB/sec 134400 MB/sec
Texel Rate 21376 Mtexels/sec 33600 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 21376 Mpixels/sec 13440 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) (x2) 800
Texture Mapping Units 16 (x2) 40
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 1700 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16) PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 3850 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6790

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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