GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (165%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be a lot (about 183%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22640 (183%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be a small bit (approximately 13%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.