GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 965M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M will be quite a bit (approximately 387%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48016 (387%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M will be quite a bit (more or less 144%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17808 (144%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.