GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which has a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It 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 960M		65 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 960M should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is much (more or less 310%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33152 (310%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be quite a bit (about 64%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.