GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 560 is 384% faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 101632 (384%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 should be quite a bit (more or less 324%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34672 (324%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15232 (143%)

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.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.