Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with GPU core speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (221%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 150400 (588%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (about 1357%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78680 (1357%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be quite a bit (about 871%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25260 (871%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.