GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which features a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR4 memory frequency of 1126 MHz. It also features 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

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80128 (125%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be much (more or less 190%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50112 (190%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is superior to the GeForce GTX 860M, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13648 (107%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.