GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also 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

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970M should be much faster 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 is a lot (approximately 592%) more effective at anisotropic 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

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot (more or less 315%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.