GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which has a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTS 450 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 32128 (126%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 should be a lot (about 332%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19256 (332%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9628 (332%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.