GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 theoretically 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%) faster with regards to 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 lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is the winner, though only just barely. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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