GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features a core clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 41 Watts (63%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 960M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is much (about 254%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31440 (254%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends 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 max fill rate.