GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which has a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 965M should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be a lot (more or less 465%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49728 (465%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be quite a bit (more or less 183%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19520 (183%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.