GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3650, which features a GPU core 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 512MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 3650		78 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3650 is 14% quicker than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650		25600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 is a lot (approximately 49%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2840 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB GDDR3 is superior to the Radeon HD 3650, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 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 ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.