Radeon HD 3650 512MB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which features a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be much (approximately 84%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB is much (about 269%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.