GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3650, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a frequency of 800 MHz on this card. 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 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3650		78 Watts
	Difference: 28 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should have identical performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 will be much (about 52%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3000 (52%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 will be a lot (more or less 52%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3650, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1500 (52%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.