GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3650, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR4 memory is set to run at a frequency of 800 MHz on this model. It features 120(24x5) SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 420 should in theory perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 is a bit (about 4%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3650 is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.