GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 965M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41984 (66%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be quite a bit (approximately 183%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 X2. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39040 (183%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 965M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8832 (41%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.