GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970M should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (81%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be much (about 592%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63232 (592%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33664 (315%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.