Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also 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 speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB will be 19% faster than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 512MB will be much (about 81%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3470 512MB should be a small bit (about 10%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.