GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which features a core clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (165%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 850M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is quite a bit (approximately 183%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22640 (183%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1616 (13%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.