GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 828 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 850M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 20992 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be quite a bit (more or less 228%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24352 (228%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is quite a bit (approximately 31%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3328 (31%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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