GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1126 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB will be 125% quicker than the GeForce GTX 860M in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80128 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is a lot (approximately 190%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50112 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13648 (107%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.