Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 49 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be quite a bit (about 541%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31400 (541%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be a lot (approximately 755%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21900 (755%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.