Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R5 M230, which features GPU clock speed of 780 MHz, and 2048 MB of DDR3 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be 66% quicker than the Radeon R5 M230 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 10496 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 is quite a bit (approximately 46%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4912 (46%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be a lot (about 243%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R5 M230, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7568 (243%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.