GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM set to run at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory perform a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 860M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M should be much (approximately 517%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64112 (517%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M is just a bit (about 3%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 352 (3%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.