GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 828 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 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

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 970M will be 262% quicker than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (262%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be a lot (about 592%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63232 (592%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be a lot (about 315%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.