Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 133504 (504%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (about 559%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59712 (559%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (more or less 140%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14912 (140%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.