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GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 860M features a clock speed of 797 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1152 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 825 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB should be 80% faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 115200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M 64000 MB/sec
Difference: 51200 (80%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be a lot (more or less 190%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M 76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 26400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 50112 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is superior to the GeForce GTX 860M, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB 26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M 12752 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 13648 (107%)

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

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GeForce GTX 860M

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 860M Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year March 12 2014 Jan 28, 2008
Code Name GM107 R680
Memory 4096 MB 512 MB (x2)
Core Speed 797 MHz 825 MHz (x2)
Memory Speed 4000 MHz 1800 MHz (x2)
Power (Max TDP) 45 watts (Unknown) watts
Bandwidth 64000 MB/sec 115200 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76512 Mtexels/sec 26400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12752 Mpixels/sec 26400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1152 320(64x5) (x2)
Texture Mapping Units 96 16 (x2)
Render Output Units 16 16 (x2)
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR3
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit (x2)
Fab Process 28 nm 55 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/(internal PCIe 1.1 x16)
DirectX Version DirectX 12 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.5 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high 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 texture units of the card by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 860M

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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