GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which features a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41984 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be quite a bit (approximately 258%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55136 (258%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8624 (68%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.