GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3650, which has clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 120(24x5) SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 3650		78 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3650 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650		25600 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 is much (about 61%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650		5800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (61%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 is much (about 61%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650		2900 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1100 (61%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.