Radeon HD 3650 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all of that 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 memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (525%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be a lot (approximately 1114%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64600 (1114%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 are processed per second. This number is worked out 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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