GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs 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) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (153%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (400%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot (more or less 1224%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71000 (1224%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (more or less 562%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.