GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which has clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (81%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be quite a bit (about 592%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63232 (592%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be a lot (about 315%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33664 (315%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.