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Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 comes with a GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM runs at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6990, which has a core clock frequency of 830 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 will be 202% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 X2 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990 320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2 105984 MB/sec
Difference: 214016 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be quite a bit (approximately 646%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990 159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2 21376 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 137984 (646%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 will be much (more or less 149%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990 53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2 21376 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 31744 (149%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 3850 X2

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 6990

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3850 X2 Radeon HD 6990
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Apr 4, 2008 March 2011
Code Name RV670 PRO Antilles
Memory 512 MB (x2) 2048 MB (x2)
Core Speed 668 MHz (x2) 830 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 1656 MHz (x2) 5000 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) (Unknown) watts 375 watts
Bandwidth 105984 MB/sec 320000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 21376 Mtexels/sec 159360 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 21376 Mpixels/sec 53120 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) (x2) 1536 (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 16 (x2) 96 (x2)
Render Output Units 16 (x2) 32 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 2640 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16) PCIe 2.1 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon HD 3850 X2

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6990

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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