Radeon HD 3650 512MB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which features a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 should theoretically be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 896 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 will be much (more or less 84%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4888 (84%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 is much (more or less 269%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.