Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB should theoretically be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 512MB should be quite a bit (about 81%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 512MB is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated 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 it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.