GeForce 940M vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 940M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (260%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M will be much (about 107%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13328 (107%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be much (more or less 45%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 940M, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3824 (45%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.