Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB is 19% quicker than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 256MB should be much (about 81%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3470 256MB will be just a bit (about 10%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 300 (10%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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