Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which features GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 32 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 5504 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB will be much (more or less 125%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13312 (125%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 is much (approximately 78%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4688 (78%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.