GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which has core clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 120(24x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8600 GTS		75 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 3 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce 8600 GTS, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS will be much (approximately 86%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5000 (86%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GTS is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2500 (86%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most 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 amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.