GeForce 930M vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a frequency of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be 300% quicker than the GeForce 930M overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M is quite a bit (about 80%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9872 (80%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be a lot (approximately 67%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 930M, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4976 (67%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.