GeForce 940M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 940M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (350%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M should be much (more or less 107%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13328 (107%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.