GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 120(24x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8500 GT		45 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3650 512MB should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8500 GT in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 61%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (61%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 512MB should be quite a bit (about 61%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.