Radeon HD 3690/3830 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 240, which has a clock frequency of 730 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R7 240 should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 2304 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 should be quite a bit (approximately 37%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3912 (37%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is superior to the Radeon R7 240, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4848 (83%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR 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 worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.