GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which comes with core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GTX 950M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M will be much (about 195%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24160 (195%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2224 (18%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.