Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3650, which has core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. 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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should be 19% faster than the Radeon HD 3650 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 should be much (approximately 81%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 256MB is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.