Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with GPU core speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (221%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 150400 (588%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (about 1357%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78680 (1357%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (approximately 871%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25260 (871%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.