Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB should be 19% faster than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 512MB will be a lot (approximately 81%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 512MB is the winner, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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 max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.