GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 860M should be 11% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is quite a bit (more or less 517%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64112 (517%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 860M is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 352 (3%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.