Radeon HD 3650 512MB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 993 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 37952 (148%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is much (more or less 331%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (331%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 512MB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7100 (245%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.