GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB will be 66% faster than the GeForce GTX 950M overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 20992 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is quite a bit (about 242%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25872 (242%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be a lot (approximately 37%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3936 (37%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.