Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7850, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 52 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7850 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (more or less 849%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49240 (849%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24620 (849%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.