GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which has a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970M, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (81%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be much (about 592%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63232 (592%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be much (about 315%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.