GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be 66% faster than the GeForce GTX 950M overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 20992 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M will be quite a bit (approximately 242%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25872 (242%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3936 (37%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.