GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 825 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 1126 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 965M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80128 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M will be a lot (approximately 129%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34016 (129%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be a bit (about 14%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3808 (14%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.