GeForce 930M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory be much faster than the GeForce 930M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 930M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 57600 (400%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 930M is quite a bit (about 80%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 930M		22272 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9872 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 930M		7424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4976 (67%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.