Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is 4% quicker than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 896 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be a lot (more or less 84%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4888 (84%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be quite a bit (approximately 269%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at 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 one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.