Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which has clock speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 120(24x5) SPUs along with 8 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should theoretically be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 81%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2600 (81%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3470 256MB is a little bit (approximately 10%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.