GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3650, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM works at a speed of 800 MHz on this model. It features 120(24x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650		78 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 104 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 260 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3650 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 86288 (337%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 will be quite a bit (approximately 536%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31064 (536%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13228 (456%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.