GeForce 830M vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which has GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be much faster than the GeForce 830M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 91584 (636%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be quite a bit (approximately 30%) better at AF than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4912 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is quite a bit (about 160%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 830M, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13144 (160%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.