Radeon HD 3650 512MB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (221%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 262400 (1025%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (more or less 1776%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103000 (1776%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (about 838%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24300 (838%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.