Radeon HD 3650 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be much faster than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (525%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (about 1114%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64600 (1114%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22700 (783%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.