Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 240, which has a clock frequency of 730 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 240 is 9% quicker than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 2304 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 should be much (about 37%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3912 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be quite a bit (about 83%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R7 240, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4848 (83%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.