GeForce 930M vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 825 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 930M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 100800 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB will be a small bit (about 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 930M. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4128 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is superior to the GeForce 930M, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18976 (256%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, HDR 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 number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.