GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 120(24x5) SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units 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 512MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 420 is 13% quicker than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 512MB will be a little bit (approximately 4%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 200 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 512MB will be just a bit (approximately 4%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.