GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 828 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs 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 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 965M should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M is much (more or less 465%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49728 (465%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be a lot (about 183%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 data (in units of MB 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 clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.