Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1120(224x5) SPUs, 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically be much better 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 will be a lot (more or less 672%) better 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

The Radeon HD 5830 should be quite a bit (about 341%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.