GeForce 830M vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 825 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 1126 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be 901% quicker than the GeForce 830M overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 129728 (901%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a lot (about 60%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9936 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should be quite a bit (more or less 221%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 830M, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18168 (221%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.