Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 97 Watts (124%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5830 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 102400 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is quite a bit (about 672%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39000 (672%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is superior to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9900 (341%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.