Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3650, which has a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 should be much (about 81%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650		5800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (81%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 256MB is superior to the Radeon HD 3650, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 300 (10%)

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

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.