GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 828 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 960M should be 21% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be quite a bit (approximately 310%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33152 (310%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be much (approximately 64%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6848 (64%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.