GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 828 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980M should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 101504 (383%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is much (about 832%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88960 (832%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be quite a bit (more or less 522%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 55744 (522%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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