GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which comes with clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 RAM. 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 GT 256MB GDDR3		47 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3650 256MB should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		22400 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 is much (about 49%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		8640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2840 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3 is quite a bit (approximately 49%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GT 256MB GDDR3		4320 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1420 (49%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.