GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which has clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is 10% quicker than the GeForce GTX 970M overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be quite a bit (approximately 246%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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

The GeForce GTX 970M will be much (about 107%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen 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 amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.