GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with a GPU core clock 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 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 51 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 950M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is much (about 195%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24160 (195%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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