Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 896 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 will be a lot (about 84%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		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 3690/3830 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the 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 core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.