Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1400 MHz on this model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (140%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 270X should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 152704 (576%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is quite a bit (approximately 649%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69312 (649%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X is a lot (more or less 199%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21312 (199%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.