GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which features a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be a lot faster than 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 will be much (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

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, by far. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill 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 get to the max fill rate.