GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which has 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 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		47 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3650 256MB should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 will be much (approximately 49%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2840 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1420 (49%)

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 across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.