GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 960M should in theory be just a bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be a lot (approximately 254%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31440 (254%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be quite a bit (about 41%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5136 (41%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.