GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which features a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 980M should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 12800 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is a lot (approximately 277%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73248 (277%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is a lot (more or less 152%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40032 (152%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the 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 the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.