GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3650, which has GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 3650		78 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3650 should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650		25600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 is quite a bit (approximately 49%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2840 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3 is much (about 49%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3650, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 1GB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1420 (49%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.