Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 828 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 27392 (107%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be quite a bit (approximately 84%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4888 (84%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7788 (269%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.