Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M255, which comes with core speeds of 940 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 memory. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is 66% quicker than the Radeon R5 M255 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 10496 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be much (about 76%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8112 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 is a lot (about 42%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R5 M255, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3168 (42%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.