GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 860M should be 21% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be quite a bit (more or less 616%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65824 (616%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 860M will be a small bit (about 19%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2064 (19%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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