GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot (approximately 246%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52544 (246%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22976 (107%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.