GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M385X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M385X should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (50%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is a lot (more or less 24%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M385X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14912 (24%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M385X is superior to the GeForce GTX 860M, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4848 (38%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could 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 ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.