Radeon HD 3650 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3650 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (525%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (about 1114%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64600 (1114%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a lot (more or less 783%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3650, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.