Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs along with 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 122 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (525%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be much (about 1114%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64600 (1114%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB will be quite a bit (approximately 783%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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.