GeForce 940M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB should in theory be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 940M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 36992 (231%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M is much (approximately 141%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15040 (141%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 256MB will be much (more or less 25%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 940M, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2112 (25%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.