GeForce GTX 965M vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 965M		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 965M in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 965M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M is a lot (about 387%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		60416 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48016 (387%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 965M should be much (about 144%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 965M		30208 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17808 (144%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.