Radeon HD 3650 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with a clock frequency of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 72 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (425%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is quite a bit (approximately 479%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27800 (479%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could 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 colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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.