Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6950 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (525%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (more or less 1114%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64600 (1114%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22700 (783%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.