GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which features a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 870M should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (262%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M should be much (approximately 886%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94704 (886%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.