GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1125 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 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be 13% quicker than the GeForce GTX 860M in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be much (about 517%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64112 (517%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 860M is the winner, but only just. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 352 (3%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

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