GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which features core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M will be 383% quicker than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 101504 (383%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be much (about 832%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88960 (832%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is superior to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.