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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 comes with clock speeds of 540 MHz on the GPU, and 700 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 32 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 120(24x5) Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 47 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 512MB 78 Watts
Difference: 31 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3650 512MB should theoretically be a bit better than the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB 25600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 22400 MB/sec
Difference: 3200 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 should be much (about 49%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB 5800 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 2840 (49%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB 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

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 Radeon HD 3650 512MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year April 2007 2008
Code Name G84 RV635 PRO
Memory 256 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 540 MHz 725 MHz
Memory Speed 1400 MHz 1600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 47 watts 78 watts
Bandwidth 22400 MB/sec 25600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 8640 Mtexels/sec 5800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 4320 Mpixels/sec 2900 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 32 120(24x5)
Texture Mapping Units 16 8
Render Output Units 8 4
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR3
Bus Width 128-bit 128-bit
Fab Process 80 nm 55 nm
Transistors 289 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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