GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 850M		40 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB will be 66% faster than the GeForce GTX 850M in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 20992 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is a lot (about 228%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24352 (228%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M is quite a bit (approximately 31%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3328 (31%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.