Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1200 MHz on this particular model. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 22 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be a lot (approximately 1072%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62200 (1072%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24300 (838%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.