Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (267%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 357504 (1349%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is a lot (about 1629%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 174112 (1629%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be much (about 529%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56512 (529%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.