GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units 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 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 20992 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is much (more or less 228%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24352 (228%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be quite a bit (about 31%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.