GeForce 940M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 828 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 940M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36992 (231%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M will be quite a bit (more or less 141%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15040 (141%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB should be a lot (approximately 25%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 940M, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2112 (25%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.