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GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

The GeForce GTX 860M makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 797 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 1152 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a core clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M 45 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 106 Watts
Difference: 61 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB 72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M 64000 MB/sec
Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be quite a bit (approximately 517%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M 76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 12400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 64112 (517%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be a little bit (more or less 3%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M 12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 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

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GeForce GTX 860M

Amazon.com

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Radeon HD 3870 1GB

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.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 860M Radeon HD 3870 1GB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year March 12 2014 Nov 19, 2007
Code Name GM107 RV670 XT
Memory 4096 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 797 MHz 775 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz 2250 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 45 watts 106 watts
Bandwidth 64000 MB/sec 72000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 76512 Mtexels/sec 12400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12752 Mpixels/sec 12400 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1152 320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units 96 16
Render Output Units 16 16
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR4
Bus Width 128-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 55 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
DirectX Version DirectX 12 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.5 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 860M

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 3870 1GB

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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