Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 120(24x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3470 512MB should theoretically be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 256MB should be a lot (approximately 81%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 300 (10%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.