Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 260X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R7 260X should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 77504 (293%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be a lot (approximately 476%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50912 (476%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be a lot (approximately 65%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6912 (65%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.