GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 X2, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 870M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9984 (10%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be quite a bit (about 393%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84016 (393%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is just a bit (more or less 6%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 X2, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1208 (6%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.