GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 75008 (142%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be quite a bit (more or less 832%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88960 (832%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be much (more or less 522%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 55744 (522%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.