GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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 speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be 125% faster than the GeForce GTX 950M in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be much (approximately 195%) better at 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

The GeForce GTX 950M should be a bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 processed in one second.

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