GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which has 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 features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 860M should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be quite a bit (more or less 616%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65824 (616%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 860M is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2064 (19%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.