Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a clock frequency of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
	Difference: 72 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (425%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be a lot (more or less 479%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27800 (479%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10540 (363%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.