GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 RAM running at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 420 will be 13% quicker than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 256MB is a little bit (about 4%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 256MB should be just a bit (about 4%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 420, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 100 (4%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.