GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which comes with core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 120(24x5) SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 63 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 150 should be 25% faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 is quite a bit (approximately 717%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41560 (717%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8940 (308%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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.