Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 250X, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, 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 R7 250X		95 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R7 250X should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 45504 (172%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X should be a lot (about 274%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29312 (274%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5312 (50%)

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 in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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.