GeForce 940M vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which comes with GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 128-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

In theory, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be a lot faster than the GeForce 940M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 10496 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M is much (more or less 141%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15040 (141%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 is quite a bit (more or less 25%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 940M, and able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.