GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 73984 (231%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be a lot (about 64%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13664 (64%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7360 (53%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.