Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6870, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1050 MHz on this specific model. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (101%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6870 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 107904 (407%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be a lot (about 372%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39712 (372%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be a lot (approximately 169%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18112 (169%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.