GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which comes with core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 870M should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 43008 (81%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M will be a lot (about 886%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94704 (886%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11896 (111%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.