Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 828 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 27392 (107%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be much (about 84%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4888 (84%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7788 (269%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.