Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5570, which has core clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 400(80x5) SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5570, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 2304 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 will be much (more or less 22%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2312 (22%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be quite a bit (about 106%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5570, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5488 (106%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated 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 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.