Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 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 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 133504 (504%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (approximately 559%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59712 (559%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (more or less 140%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14912 (140%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.