Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a clock frequency of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 107904 (407%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be much (about 214%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22912 (214%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2752 (26%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.