Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3650, which features a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should be a small 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 will be quite a bit (approximately 81%) better at AF 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 running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 256MB is the winner, though only just barely. (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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's 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 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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.