Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with core clock speeds of 840 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 800 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 72 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (425%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be quite a bit (approximately 479%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27800 (479%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be much (about 363%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10540 (363%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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