AMD Radeon HD3690 256MB GDDR3

[Rusin]

http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=226551

Specifications:
-Core: 667MHz
-Memory: 1660Mhz
-320 SP's
-16xTMU and ROP
-256MB GDDR3
-128-bit memorybandwith (25.6GB/s)

On otherwords it's HD3850 with halfed memorybandwith. This one should out perform Geforce 9500 GT and be beaten by Geforce 9600 GT. There will be 9600 GS also.

 

[s44]

Neat cooler, though I doubt that's the reference one.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

what do you mean by 'reference one'?

 

[DSF]

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
what do you mean by 'reference one'?

The "reference design" is the official ATI card design. Occasionally manufacturers deviate from this to alter the cooler or other parts of the card. (For example, I believe there's a non-reference 8800GT out there somewhere with 1GB of VRAM.)

 

[Avalon]

So theoretically I could downclock my mem speed on my HD3850 to 830Mhz and bench an "HD3690"?

 

[Rusin]

Avalon:
Theoretically you could be very helpful !

----

That card is based on Triplex's HD3850..only visible difference comes from memorychips.

 

[Zap]

Sounds like it would make for a nice $100 card. Finally the midrange isn't so far behind.

 

[Rusin]

Yes.. wonder how it will perform against GF 9600 GS..how much it will suffer from that membandwith

 

[MarcVenice]

Lots, as far as I know, the cards below the HD3850 aren't really ment for gaming. So if your gaming is your thing, don't skimp on the GPU.

 

[Avalon]

Well, this has me curious. I'll see if the memory on my card can handle being downclocked that low, and I'll run some benches tonight.

What games do you guys want me to bench? I'm only going to do a few due to time constraints. My game list to pick from is as follows:

UT3
World in Conflict
Crysis
TF2
CS Source
Far Cry
Doom 3
Oblivion
FEAR

 

[Avalon]

Alright, I got 3dmark06 and 05 results. Haven't had a chance to run any games yet, but I'll get on it. My rig is running an E2140 @ 2.9Ghz and a stock 670/1660 Visiontek Radeon 3850 256MB, so I downclocked my mem to 830 to simulate the 128bit 3690.

3DMark 05
3850 - 14593
"3690" - 12537

3DMark 06
3850 - 9095
"3690" - 6687

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: Avalon
So theoretically I could downclock my mem speed on my HD3850 to 830Mhz and bench an "HD3690"?

No, your 3850 has twice the memory bus width over a 3690 256bit vs 128bit so the results will not be representative of the final product.

 

[Rusin]

How would that widht change things? If both have same GB/s tranfer rate..

 

[n7]

Damn, so many new cards, & all low end or midrange.

I want new high end damnit!

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: Rusin
How would that widht change things? If both have same GB/s tranfer rate..

Well someone more clued in than me is probably better to comment on the specifics, but this is my take- if you clock a 128bit bus @ 1660mhz and a 256bit bus @ the same 1660mhz I'm sure you'll notice a difference, even if the transfer rate is the same in GPU-z -it would be a good test to conduct. I am talking from the perspective of say the difference between the now ancient 9800pro 256bit and the 128bit version (9800SE/vanilla if i remember correctly), there was a performance difference between the same architecture on different bus width- similar to this 38 series vs 36 series argument.

 

[Rusin]

Both Radeon 9800 PRO versions, 128-bit and 256-bit, had same memory frequency: 680MHz. Meaning that 128-bit version had 10.88GB/s and 256-bit version had 21.76GB/s for transfer rate. This is simple and there should be difference between these two models. But what if we would down clock memory on that 256-bit version to 340MHz. Then that 256-bit version would have 10.88GB/s transfer rate as does 128-bit version. In this case HD3850 and HD3690 have only one difference, first of them has 256-bit bus and latter 128-bit. Now we were thinking about down clocking HD3850..

So that:
128-bit 1660MHz
256-bit 830MHz (His HD3850 in this test)

Both would give as something like 26.56GB/s. Question is that is there any significant performance difference between 128-bit and 256-bit memory systemse when they both have same transfer rate?

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

What are you guys discussing? Avalon already posted the results with his own card

Originally posted by: Avalon
Alright, I got 3dmark06 and 05 results. Haven't had a chance to run any games yet, but I'll get on it. My rig is running an E2140 @ 2.9Ghz and a stock 670/1660 Visiontek Radeon 3850 256MB, so I downclocked my mem to 830 to simulate the 128bit 3690.

3DMark 05
3850 - 14593
"3690" - 12537

3DMark 06
3850 - 9095
"3690" - 6687

 

[v8envy]

The difference between half the bandwidth and half the clock should be latency. However, I doubt it'll make a big difference in the end. This is a very valid sneak peak at what we're looking at in the budget segment, performance wise.

Thanks Avalon! Definitely looking forward to any and all game benchmarks.