GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 120(24x5) Stream Processors, 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 256MB		78 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 63 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTS 150 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be a lot (approximately 717%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41560 (717%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8940 (308%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. 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 better 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 applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.