GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (165%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be much (approximately 183%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22640 (183%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1616 (13%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.