GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 828 MHz on this card. 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)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 870M should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (81%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a lot (approximately 886%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94704 (886%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be quite a bit (about 111%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11896 (111%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.