Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 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 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (221%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6970 is 588% quicker than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (more or less 1357%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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 full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and also will be able to handle 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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved 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 memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.