GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The DDR2 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 120(24x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3650 256MB should in theory be a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 will be quite a bit (approximately 49%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2840 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.