GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which comes with core speeds of 725 MHz on the GPU, and 800 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 RAM. 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

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 119 Watts (153%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (400%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (more or less 1224%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71000 (1224%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be a lot (approximately 562%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16300 (562%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.