GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3650, which features core 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650		78 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (153%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3650 overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (400%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (more or less 1224%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3650. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71000 (1224%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (about 562%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3650, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16300 (562%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.