GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs 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 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 950M should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 5504 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M will be a lot (about 242%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25872 (242%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M is a lot (about 37%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.