Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which features a clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should in theory be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 512MB is quite a bit (more or less 81%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 256MB is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.